SOUTHERN WATER SERVICES LIMITED

Southern Water policy is to establish any new contractual arrangement based on 60-day payment terms. However, as part of the regulated negotiated procurement process, we will consider the commercial benefit of negotiating shorter payment terms. In addition, as part of our approach to Corporate and Social responsibility we will consider the application of 30-day payment terms for appropriate Small and Medium Enterprises.

Southern Water operates a range of payment mechanisms including direct debit, Purchasing Cards and BACS.
Our core system is SAP and we have a three-way match between the purchase order, goods receipt and invoice details. To avoid delays in payment Southern Water requests suppliers to:
 Ensure that they have a valid and current purchase order number
 Send all documents and credit notes by email to SouthernWater@DOL.co.uk in PDF format. If sending more than one invoice in the same email, please provide a separate file attachment for each document
 Only submitting them when goods or services have been delivered
 Not split invoices against multiple purchase orders
If suppliers are unable to utilise email, invoices and credit notes should be sent direct to Accounts Payable, Southern Water, Southern House, Yeoman Road, Worthing BN13 3NX.
We have a number of ‘term-contractors’ undertaking construction and infrastructure
maintenance work. These contractors’ issue monthly applications for payment covering a very large number of individual jobs. In accordance with the guidance each of these jobs has been treated as an individual invoice payment even though they are paid on a consolidated invoice.
As a result, the performance statistics reported can be significantly influenced by the timing of payment of 274 consolidated invoices which are treated as over 67,000 invoices in the calculations.
The underlying performance of our payments to other suppliers is as follows:
Average time to pay 41 days
Within 30 days 49%
In 30 to 60 days 42%
Over 60 days 9%
Invoices due but not paid to agreed terms 17%

At Southern Water our aim is to resolve invoice queries or disputes in a timely manner and ensure payments are made at the earliest opportunity. All queries should be addressed in the first instance to accountspayableBPS@southernwater.co.uk
If the issue cannot be resolved by the accounts payable team, then the matter will be directed to the Purchase Order owner for resolution. Upon resolution of any queries or disputes if the invoice has become due it will be settled on the next payment run.