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18 articles published between August 2026 and September 2026. Where to start is below; the rest follow, newest first.
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A Bank Guarantee Is the Only Document You Own That Expires by Being Ignored
Every other document in a contracting business ends by being completed. A guarantee ends when a date passes — and Article 418 says renewal has to be agreed before that date, not after. Which makes the expiry field the instrument, and the instrument sits on no ledger.
Professional services7 min read
Your Largest Client and Your Best Client Are Rarely the Same Client
Revenue per client is the number every firm already has and the least useful one it owns. What it costs to serve that client is the number that decides everything, and almost nobody has it.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
The Credit Limit Is Checked After the Truck Has Left
Almost every trading system has a credit limit field, and almost none of them has a credit control. The difference is not the rule — it is where in the order-to-cash chain the rule fires, and by the third of the three candidate positions there is nothing left to refuse.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
The Import Box on Your VAT Return Is Filled In by Someone Else
Import VAT arrives in the return pre-populated from customs declarations against your TRN. Your purchase ledger is built from supplier invoices. The two are assembled from different documents on different dates by different people, and reconciling them is nobody's monthly job.
4 September 2026ReadProfessional services7 min read
The Cost You Paid on the Client's Behalf and Never Got Back
A fee paid from a partner's card at four in the afternoon is a cost with no engagement attached to it. Whether it is a disbursement or a recharge was decided at that moment — and by month end nobody can prove which, so it becomes neither.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
Three Letters on the Purchase Order Decide When the Stock Becomes Yours
FOB and CIF are not shipping jargon. They are the clause that sets the date your inventory rises, your payable is due, your insurance responsibility begins and your VAT is recoverable — and most trading systems record none of it until the container is physically at the door.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
The Margin Was Calculated on the Supplier's Price. The Cost Arrived Six Weeks Later
A purchase order carries one number. The cost of the goods it buys is assembled over the following two months out of freight, duty, clearing, handling and demurrage — and by the time the last invoice arrives, the stock has usually been sold at a price set from the first one.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
The Bank Is Holding Money Against a Shipment Your System Has Never Heard Of
Letters of credit, trust receipts and bank guarantees are the machinery a trading business actually runs on, and almost none of it exists inside the ERP. It lives in a facility letter, a bank portal and one person's head — and the limit is discovered when it is reached.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
You Bought in Dollars, Sold in Dirhams, and Booked a Profit That Included a Bet
The dirham is pegged to the dollar, so a lifetime of dollar buying teaches a trading company that currency is not a thing it has to think about. Then it buys in euros, and the habit stays — and the margin it reports on the sale is fixed at one of four rates, three of which have not happened yet.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
Everybody Has the Price List. Almost Nobody Sells at It
Between the price in the list and the money that stays in the business there are seven layers, each approved by a different person, none of them visible on the same document as any other. The result is the same customer buying the same item at four prices across three branches, and nobody able to say which one was right.
4 September 2026ReadProfessional services7 min read
You Recorded a Hundred, Billed Seventy, and Called It a Full Job
A fee agreed at a discount is a pricing decision. A fee written down at invoicing is a delivery failure. They reduce the same number by the same amount, and a firm that codes them the same way can never tell which of its problem is which.
4 September 2026ReadProfessional services7 min read
Money Received Is Not Money Earned, and Your Bank Balance Does Not Know the Difference
The annual retainer is invoiced in January and the year's best cash month is the month before any of the work is done. What arrives is not a result. It is an obligation with the money attached, and almost nothing in a firm's system says so.
4 September 2026ReadTrading and distribution7 min read
The Margin You Earned in March and Claimed in November
A supplier rebate is earned one invoice at a time and collected once a year, and in between it exists nowhere. So the buyer negotiates without knowing how close he is to the next tier, and the credit note, when it finally comes, lands in an account that leaves every item's gross margin exactly as wrong as it was.
4 September 2026ReadProfessional services7 min read
The Work Is Finished. The Invoice Is a Decision Nobody Made
Unbilled work in progress is money you have already spent on salaries and not yet asked anybody for. The chain from work done to cash has six links, five of them have an owner, and the one that does not is the link that turns cost into revenue.
4 September 2026ReadConstruction10 min read
A Bank Guarantee Is the Only Document You Own That Expires by Being Ignored
Every other document in a contracting business ends by being completed. A guarantee ends when a date passes — and Article 418 says renewal has to be agreed before that date, not after. Which makes the expiry field the instrument, and the instrument sits on no ledger.
1 September 2026ReadConstruction12 min read
You Pay the VAT on Retention Long Before Anyone Pays You the Retention
The VAT law never uses the word retention. It gives you four dates in Article 26 and lets your contract and your invoice decide which one fires — which makes the tax point a systems question wearing a tax question's clothes.
1 September 2026ReadConstruction6 min read
The Advance Payment Is a Loan, and Three Numbers Have to Move Together
An advance is money you were paid before you earned it, secured by a bank guarantee and repaid out of your own certificates. The balance, the recovery and the guarantee must stay in step — and in most systems only one of the three is tracked.
18 August 2026ReadConstruction7 min read
Retention Is a Loan You Made Without Deciding To
A percentage of every certificate is withheld, accrues against a cap, and comes back in two instalments years apart. Most systems record the deduction and forget the balance, which is how a contractor ends up unable to say what is owed to them.
18 August 2026ReadConstruction7 min read
Every Contractor Has a Profit Figure. Most of Them Are Reading a Timing Difference
Cost value reconciliation compares what a job has earned against what it has cost, at the same date. It fails almost always for one reason: value and cost arrive late by different amounts, so the margin you read mid-job is mostly lag.
18 August 2026ReadAfter the reading
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