While undergoing a VMS implementation, the question of payment is of great importance. Should the VMS tool be responsible for being the intermediary between Clients and Agencies for payment, where does the onus rest to ensure payment is made?

We know that the Client will pay based on invoices received after validation and reconciliation of these invoices. Agencies determine outstanding payment whether it’s based on their internal reconciliation, or those received from the VMS.

At the end of the day, who is responsible?

If the Contractor is already getting paid by the Agency regardless if payment is received from the Agency, then the onus does not rest with the Contractor.

If the VMS is invoicing based on the hours approved via the tool, then the VMS cannot be responsible for outstanding hours unpaid.

The Client is usually unaware of outstanding payments due to their regular job or lack of involvement in payment schedules.

The Agency in worst case scenarios have paid their Contractors without receiving payment from their Client/VMS. Therefore in my opinion, the onus lies with the Agency to ensure that their Contractors are captured in the system.

When there exists a sophisticated VMS tool, the Agency has the ability to track unpaid hours, non-existent contracts, and outstanding invoices. A VMS has the ability to streamline processes on behalf of the Agency, taking a lot of burden and hours away from reconciliations.

Similarly, a VMS has the ability to take away the burden from the client interacting with hundreds of Agencies, tracking invoices and spend amounts.

As the intermediary contact, the VMS is the process flow system streamlining, tracking, and reporting on behalf of both the Agency and Client.

On a Friday afternoon, these are my thoughts.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to your comments.

Neha