What have you all done this week?

Well, when I took over responsibility for the financial records of the family business back in April, their state could be generously described as utterly horrifying.

• Outstanding sales invoices dating back to 2011
• Every purchase order since 2010 stacked up in a pile of mouldering paper against the wall (in pretty blatant violation of the Data Protection Act, let alone its accounting implications).
• Company assets scattered across 7 different bank accounts with no complete record of when money was going into, out of, or between them or what it was for.
• Purchases for the business made out of personal accounts that my family now wanted to reclaim VAT tax back on.

The list goes on. All along, they'd paid what was owed to the taxman according to the most generous interpretation of the business' earnings, so that wasn't an issue. It's just they'd been incredibly lax about claiming things back, or chasing up people who owed money. And the state of the records meant that if they were audited, they'd struggle to prove that they'd been honest about it all. The business is one that would lend itself incredibly easily to money-laundering.

All of this is just to preface the achievement for the week: I finally received the last outstanding cheque for an order placed more than 90 days ago (in this case, from Nov 2014). That marks the end of the five-figure disparity in the books from when I took over.

After months of wheedling, demanding, and threatening people over e-mail and phone for the past few months, the ledgers balance now, for the first time!

I will hopefully never again have to hear that stagnant pause after someone asks when their payment was due and I say "August 2013..."