Business Administration Report: Workplace Incident and Solutions

This report, submitted by a student of business administration, details an incident involving an inaccurate invoice at Husali Construction Pvt Ltd. The report outlines the error, which involved overcharging a client due to a missed discount, and the subsequent actions taken to rectify the mistake. The student describes the communication with the client, the decision to be transparent and offer a corrected payment, and the positive outcome of maintaining a good customer relationship. The report also discusses alternative approaches that could have been employed, such as using invoicing software or issuing credit notes, and concludes that the chosen approach was the most convenient given the circumstances. The student reflects on the importance of attention to detail, good communication, and the value of customer satisfaction, and emphasizes the lessons learned from the experience to prevent similar issues in the future.

Acknowledgment
Above all, I would like to offer my gratefulness to Almighty Allah for enabling me to
complete this report within the given time period.
I would like to offer my genuine appreciation to my Lecturer, (name), for giving me
guidance in order to make this study as informative and useful as possible. I would also like
to express my utmost thankfulness to (some people working in the workplace) for giving me
in-depth knowledge about organising project meetings, dealing with important
documentations, such as responding to business inquiries, drawing up contracts, billing
invoices, etc.
In addition, these two years of experience taught me the cruciality of being thorough and
paying attention to detail, sensitivity and understanding, being flexible and open to change,
good communication skills, and many more skills as such.
Moreover, I would like to thank everyone from the organisation for providing the much-
needed information about the company to complete this report. Their guidance and co-
operation enabled me to get a good understanding of the tasks performed at the organization
as well.
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Abstract
This report is written about an unfortunate incident that occurred at my workplace. It includes
an objective discussion on the incident that occurred, and how we dealt with the incident,
including the particular reasons why we did as such, and other possible measures we could
have taken to deal with the incident,
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Introduction
I am Ahmed Ahunaf and I’m a student studying business administration at (place). My
interest has always been in business administration due to my love for being closely involved
in managerial process of a business. However, after this working experience, now I can say
that I love administrative work because of the real-world work that goes behind it, and I was
able to experience that throughout my two years of work experience. My work experience at
the Husali Construction Pvt Ltd started on (date) and finished (X) work hours later leaving
me with an immense amount of knowledge, learning experiences, and growing opportunities
that I will forever appreciate.
This report is part of the (course name) carried out at (place). The work experience has to
fulfil the non-lecturing component of the course.
This particular report will aim on describing an unfortunate incident that took place at my
workplace, so that it would help me become a well-prepared employee.
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The incident
In my workplace, an invoice was once billed inaccurately and sent to the trade receivable.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to identify the error until the trade receivable contacted and
informed us about the error. We had to take action immediately, in a way that it would not
affect the reputation and image of our company negatively. Moreover, even if the error was
totally unintentional, we would be costing that client a lot of time in return, and there was the
possibility of losing the client for further projects as well.
Due to the possible circumstances mentioned above, we had to deal with the situation
rather thoughtfully. The error that was made in the invoice was overcharging the client
without including the promised amount of discount we claimed that we would offer. The
person who was billing the invoices was not informed that the client will be offered a 15%
discount by the superior. After consulting the concerned stakeholders, we decided to be
honest with the customer, and tell him to make the payment after deducting the discount and
apologise for the inconvenience caused. So, we emailed the letter below to the client:
Once we received the cheque, we made the required rectifications to the entries made.
Luckily, the customer was indeed patient, and cooperative in fixing the error occurred. Both
the client and we had similar assumptions on the oversight happened. This customer is still
one of our loyal customers, and we are much more cautious of issues like this than before.
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Dear Jane,
Thank you for pointing out the error in the invoice. You are totally right. It seems that we
overpriced you without including the discount promised. Our records show that we didn’t
apply the 15% discount that we offered in our promotional contract. Sometimes, the
employee who makes the invoice does not get all the required information. I failed to
inform him that you had been given a discount.
Please subtract $7,500 from the bill we sent you. The correct amount is $42,500, not
$50,000. And then, send us a cheque for the corrected amount. We will then take care of
this issue and we guarantee you that there is no additional need for concern.
Jane, I am sorry about the muddle this oversight caused. You are a valued client at our
company. In the future, we will be sure to double-check our invoices. Thank you for your
patience and your immense cooperation in correcting this error.
Sincerely,
(Name of the Manager)

We could have lost a client, or met worse circumstances if it was another client who had
different assumptions (such as “our company’s services are always inaccurate, or contain
errors” or “our employees are careless in performing their jobs” just because only one
oversight occurred) in-terms of our assumption regarding the error. Also, this oversight could
have been viewed as a major problem, rather than just an unfortunate petty issue. And, it
could have given the client an impression that these types of errors are pretty common in the
organisation. And, we could have used much complicated approaches to cater to this error or
left the issue unaddressed as well, when we think as the third party.
In dealing with the problem, we used the measure we believed to be most relevant to the
situation. Also, we were fortunate as the issue came up with a regular client, who we have
worked with before. We would have used a different and much more professional approach,
if he wasn’t a familiar client. Moreover, we could have used a better approach in dealing with
this oversight, and also could have avoided this oversight form happening as well by using
measures such as:
 Recording settlement discounts and considering it before making the invoices
 Using an invoicing software to keep track of the invoice issues
 Issuing a credit note and rectifying the error
 Issuing another cancellation invoice with a negative amount so that a correct
invoice can be raised with another invoice number, as it is legally advisable to keep
each and every invoice in the business records, without cancelling any
However, we decided that we should rather keep the issue simple and not worry the
customer and not spend too much time on rectifying this small error, as we had a way to
easily settle this misconception and the client was familiar with our company.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that the approach our company used was the best, and most
convenient approach for both, us and the client according to the situation. If we used another
approach such as issuing a credit note or a cancellation invoice, it would have costed both the
parties extra time, and effort which is not exactly needed to cater for a petty oversight like
this, which was identified before the client settled the payment.
I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this report and hope the report would be
appreciative.
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