The Periodical Publishers Association plans to set up a
cross-industry group to find ways of solving the increasing problems of
late payments to magazines by media agencies.
The PPA’s credit management group will meet on Friday to discuss how
best to select a panel. The PPA’s deputy chief executive Peter Dear has
written to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and hopes to
get them on board. ’Streamlining methods of payment would benefit
everyone,’ he said. ’I don’t want to pre-empt their reaction, but I am
very hopeful the IPA will join us in this initiative.’
The plan for the cross-industry panel follows the PPA’s Credit ’99
conference last Tuesday, at which representatives from the buying and
selling sides agreed that late payment had become a serious problem.
Dear explained: ’They all identified that the system is bound to create
late payment problems because it is so complex. And this has created an
unnecessary and long-running antagonism between the agencies and the
magazines.
The conclusion was that we can, to a certain degree, solve this if we
draw up best practice targets and guidelines.’
He added that recent research conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for
the PPA found that invoice queries were the main reasons for late
payment.
