Payment of invoices
The Council has a target to pay invoices within 30 calendar days of receipt (excluding disputed invoices), and within 10 working days for small businesses.
- Payment runs are twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday)
- Payment is by BACS
- BACS payments take three working days to reach your account.
How to send invoices and credit notes
For how you must send your invoices or credit notes, so we can process them and pay you without delay, please see below.Follow these simple rules
- All invoices or credit notes must be in PDF format. No other file format is accepted.
- 1 PDF to 1 invoice or credit note as each file is treated as a new document.
- Do not apply a security setting to your PDF as they can't be read by our system.
- The PDF must be attached to the original email and not embedded as part of a forwarded email.
- Only send invoices or credit notes. Do not send other documents such as terms and conditions or statements.
- Any scanned PDF document should be a minimum resolution of 300dpi.
- Try to keep the PDF file size as low as possible, typically less than 150KB.
- A valid purchase order number must be clearly displayed on the invoice. Please obtain this number when a Bedford Borough Council staff member contacts you to request your goods/services. Payment can be delayed if there is no purchase order number.
- Clearly display your name, address, contact and bank details.
- Make sure each invoice or credit note is a given a unique invoice/credit note number, and each attachment to your email is uniquely named.
Send invoices or credit notes directly to invoices@bedford.gov.uk.
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at creditors@bedford.gov.uk
Publication Scheme
The below links shows monthly reports of payments made to external bodies and suppliers, published in accordance with the Local Government Transparency Code.
Reports are published on the website for the current financial year, plus two previous years. If you would like to review data for any period prior to this, or you would like to know more about an individual transaction, please email creditors@bedford.gov.uk, quoting the relevant period or transaction number.
We will make every effort to respond quickly, although more complex enquires may be treated as Freedom of Information requests and be subject to the specified timescales.
Timely payment of undisputed invoices
Download Timely payment of undisputed invoices report - 2018-2019
Published in accordance with The Public Contracts Regulations 2015; Regulation 113.
Publication of these reports form part of the Council's commitment to be open and transparent with its residents. Data will be published on a monthly basis within 10 working days of each month end.
Further information
Contact creditors@bedford.gov.uk if you would like to know more about the type of business conducted with these suppliers. Please quote the relevant transaction number.
The Council aims to provide a response as soon as possible but, in some cases, there will be a need to respect information that could be confidential or sensitive (such as for commercial reasons).