eeek.
Get in touch with the Boss and get them to set up a direct money transfer. At least get him/her to agree to it first.

payPal should allow you to transfer money directly from a credit card to someone with an email address without an account. (You'll have to enter the Visa Card details). I'd not recommend it though. $15,000 to a vendor without the bosses authorisation. *shudders*

Wow, your boss is like some infernal moron who just sucks at her job, eh?

DO NOT USE PAYPAL TO DO THIS

Set up a wire transfer via your employer's bank account to his. PayPal is not a bank, and should not be trusted with any sum of money greater than $50.

"his" being the vendor, of course.

That's what I thought, cmonkey.

I'll see if she's willing to go through the hassle of getting this guy his money.

She's such a prick.

oooh, Specks, I dunno about this... Not to say you shouldn't trust your vendors, but what are your contract terms with this particular vendor? Cash on deliverly? Net 10 days? 30/60/90 days? You see where I'm going with this, right?

Vendors in companies I've worked at are always whining about cash, and yea it's a bitch but sometimes you just gotta play dumb with them and to a certain degree it isn't your company's fault that they're strapped for cash... that's THEIR C.F.O.'s issue.

Not to be a devil's advocate or anything, and yea it's painfully obvious that your boss is a moron, but just FYI, sending out that amount of funds without director level approval is a firing offence in pretty much every company I've worked for.

What kind of a fuckwit is this woman you're working for, Specklet? How the hell does she manage to keep her business going?

What does she do right? There must be something, right? She has to be able at something?

LFR is right. A vendor would bill you daily, if they could. You don't even have to play dumb- in this case, there's really very little you can do, other than contact your boss. Let it be her problem.

She manages to keep it going because she has an extremely tolerant, patient, diligent Specklet who runs around after sorting her badly organised shit out.

Oh my goodness, to be clear: I would NEVER send out that amount of money to a vendor without her approval! (I debated on whether or not to buy $40 of office supplies that I needed to do in order to complete one of the tasks she left for me to have completed before her return.)

lfr, the guy really and truly needs the money, and the work is done. He needs to pay his guys!

I wrote an email to my boss. I really hope she takes care of this; that poor man is freaking out!

This, by the way, is the same boss who, the day before she left, wrote a check to the landlord for one month's rent, then asked me to call them to let them know November's rent would be two weeks late. Why didn't she write them a check for both month's rent? I don't know.

More to the point: why did she not leave a stack of signed checks in case, you know, something happened and I needed to give someone some money? You know, like BUSINESS RELATED THINGS???

On preview: awwww thanks, Don!

lfr, the guy really and truly needs the money, and the work is done. He needs to pay his guys!

Like lfr said, not your problem that he runs his business in such a way that 1 check not getting paid the day the invoice is submitted prevents him from paying his workers. Not your problem at all. His problem.

Yeah, technically that's true. But when you own a small business and you get a big honkin' job and the person who hired you isn't paying you for three weeks after you've invoiced and not sooner, it kind of sucks to be you.

In the business world, accounts payable delays of up to 90 days aren't that uncommon. That's why accounts payable and accounts receivable show up on the balance sheet.

(R.I.P. Herb Kornfeld 5-1-07).

When I've been running businesses, my accounts mantra was always "collect early, pay late", but there were always exceptions to that rule, so maybe it is worth bending over for that special contractor, especially if there are possible future favours you can ask of them. A bank transfer is the way to go and, if they are with the same bank, he may even get his money the same day.