How to Address the Ghost Invoices Haunting Your P&L!

Brian Dickson

As the P&L leader of a transportation company, one of the most frustrating issues I faced was receiving unpaid invoices for services rendered months earlier. These invoices, typically related to maintenance or operations, were often substantial, sometimes totaling hundreds or thousands of dollars. The accounting department hadn’t accrued these expenses because they were unaware of the expenditures. As a result, the costs would impact the P&L in the month the invoice was received instead of the month the expense was incurred.


I referred to these as "ghost invoices," they often appeared during already challenging months in terms of profitability, making our financial recovery much more complex. Their arrival led to difficult discussions with my team during monthly review calls. So, how did I tackle this issue? Since Ghostbusters only deals with real ghosts, I implemented a few straightforward measures to raise awareness between the accounting department and myself.


First, I mandated that all expenditures above a specific amount be approved before the department head authorized the work. I would then share this information with the Accounting Manager or analyst, ensuring we knew that a significant expense was forthcoming. 


The second tactic involved creating a shared log that the Accounting and Maintenance or Operations departments could access. We called these "checkbook registers" back when checkbooks were still prevalent. The teams used them to log all approved invoices. Accounting would review this log throughout the month and accrue for any invoices that hadn’t arrived by the end of the month.


Finally, I had a serious conversation with our vendors about the importance of timely invoice submission. Often, vendors would hold onto invoices for months before submitting them, only to later demand immediate payment, creating unnecessary work and frustration for everyone involved.


If you'd like help exercising these and other ghosts haunting your operations, use the button above to schedule a no-obligation consultation session.

"Maximizing Profits: How Small Gains Can Lead to Big Dollars in Your Business"

By Brian Dickson • January 14, 2025
Have you ever seen Tony D'Amato's (played by Al Pacino) famous Inches speech in the pro football epic Any Given Sunday? If you haven't, it is available on YouTube and is worth a few minutes, as it might be one of the greatest motivational speeches out there. While the entire speech was inspiring, these words resonated with me: "Life's a game of inches. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second. We fight for that inch. We tear ourselves and everyone around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches thats gonna make the difference between winning and losing." - Tony D'Amato Coach's words have constantly reminded me of what it takes to be profitable in the ground transportation industry—so much so that I've used this speech but asked my teams to replace the word inch with dollars. Think about that for a moment. The ground transportation industry is a game of dollars. The dollars we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of our operations, every minute, every second...While I'm not encouraging anyone to tear themselves and everyone else around them to pieces for those dollars, I am encouraging you to pursue profitability relentlessly in your decision-making. If you are unsure how to do that or where to start, I can help. Whether it's fostering growth or expansion, identifying and implementing organizational priorities, evaluating and improving your customer experience, enhancing your labor efficiency, assessing your workplace culture, developing and implementing your pricing strategy, or aligning your organizational structure, roles, and responsibilities, I can help you identify and harvest those inches (dollars) that are all around you, because we know when we add up all those inches (dollars), that's gonna make the difference between winning and losing money this year. Schedule a no-obligation consultation today using the button above to get started finding those dollars .
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