Financial monitoring protocol — wage payment timing log
In brief: A wage payment timing log for a Bangladesh buying house tracks three numbers per factory per month: first worker paid date (healthy by the 7th), last worker paid date (within four working days of the first), and percentage of workforce paid inside that window (95%+). Drift on all three triggers escalation. This is the highest-frequency signal in the Bengal Origin Co. financial monitoring protocol.
by 7th
First payment
Wages must reach first worker by the 7th of the following month.
4 days
Spread window
Last worker should receive wages within four working days of the first.
95%+
Workforce paid
At least 95% of the workforce paid inside that four-day window.
In 2022, a factory I was placing orders with lost its bank financing mid-production. The first external symptom was not a delivery delay. It was wages paid four days late, then six days late, then split across two cycles. I did not have a log. I had a feeling. A feeling is not a financial monitoring protocol. Every current threshold in our wage payment timing log exists because I did not have those numbers written down in time.
What does a wage payment timing log actually track?
The log records three data points per factory per month. The first is the calendar date the first worker received their wages for the previous month. The second is the date the last worker received their wages for the same cycle. The third is the percentage of total workforce paid within two working days of that first payment.
A healthy Bangladesh factory pays the first worker by the 7th of the following month, the last worker within four working days of that, and 95% or more of the workforce inside that four-day band. Below those thresholds, the factory is operating inside its working capital. Above them, something in the back-to-back LC and bank financing chain is under stress. The log is short. Two lines per factory per month. It is the highest-frequency entry in our financial monitoring dashboard.
Why does wage timing predict factory delivery failure?
Bangladesh factories do not operate on retained cash. They operate on bank credit, drawn against confirmed export orders. When a bank tightens or pulls a working capital facility, the factory's first option is rarely to call the buyer. The first option is to delay payroll by a few days, hoping the next LC payment closes the gap.
Wages drift before fabric drift. Fabric suppliers will hold a shipment if invoices age beyond 30 days. Utility providers will tolerate 45-60 days. Workers cannot be deferred — but they can be paid late by a few days without immediate consequence. That short window of tolerance is exactly what makes wage timing the leading indicator. The factory is using the only stretch in the system that does not generate an external phone call to the buyer. By the time delivery slips, the timing log has been drifting for two or three cycles.
The three numbers I track per factory per month
The log is deliberately narrow. Three numbers, captured monthly, plotted against a six-month rolling baseline. The table below is the format every Bengal Origin Co. factory partner appears in on our internal dashboard.
| Number tracked | Healthy band | Warning band | Escalation trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| First worker paid | By the 7th | 8th–12th | 13th or later |
| Last worker paid | Within 4 working days of first | 5–7 days | 8 days or more |
| Workforce paid in window | 95% or higher | 85–94% | Below 85% |
| Month-on-month direction | Stable or improving | One cycle of slippage | Two consecutive cycles of slippage |
Source: Bengal Origin Co. internal financial monitoring protocol, applied to active factory partners since 2023. Thresholds calibrated against the 2022 failure case and 14 subsequent vetting cycles.
Drift on one number is informative — I log it and check the next cycle. Drift on two is a warning, and I request a current bank solvency certificate refresh inside seven days. Drift on all three is the escalation trigger, and the order on that floor moves to backup-factory readiness within 48 hours.
How does Bengal Origin Co. source wage payment data?
I will be specific about this because vague accountability is not accountability. The data comes from three sources cross-checked against each other. The factory's own payroll register (signed copy, dated). The bank salary disbursement statement, where the factory pays through a corporate account — which is most large facilities. And a sample-based check with workers on the floor during our monthly visit, asking three or four workers in different lines when they received last month's wages.
If two of the three sources agree, the log entry is confirmed. If they diverge, the divergence itself becomes the log entry — that gap is information. A factory whose payroll register says the 7th but whose workers say the 12th is a factory with a documentation problem and a cash flow problem at the same time. That is not a marginal case. That is an escalation case. The full set of these checks sits inside the broader factory financial vetting protocol we apply before any first order.
Wage payment timing log — scope
Working capital tightness before delivery slips
Bank credit line withdrawal in progress
Selective payment of skilled workers only
Subcontract income covering own payroll
Utility-before-wage stress sequencing
Month-on-month deterioration trend
Labour rights violations (needs BSCI / SMETA)
Chemical compliance (needs OEKO-TEX / REACH)
Building safety (needs LEED / structural audit)
Subcontracting itself (needs midpoint floor photos)
One-off banking glitches without trend
Fraud where records are fabricated
When drift triggers the escalation protocol
Two consecutive cycles of slippage on any single number, or one cycle of slippage on all three, moves the factory from green to amber in our traffic-light dashboard. Amber means three things happen inside 48 hours. The bank solvency certificate is requested in current form, dated within 14 days. The backup factory for any active order on that floor is confirmed at 30% capacity readiness. The client whose order is in production receives a written status note — not an alarm, a status note — so they are not learning about exposure for the first time when delivery is already at risk.
Red status means production on that floor stops accepting new commitments, and the client is offered a switch to the backup factory before the next cutting cycle. We have moved one order under this protocol since the 2022 failure that built this company. We did not lose the delivery. That is the entire point of the log.
What This Means for European Brands
If you source from Bangladesh through a buying house, the question to ask is not whether they audit factories annually. The question is what they track monthly between audits. CSDDD and LkSG both require ongoing monitoring — not point-in-time certificates. A wage payment timing log is the cheapest, fastest, most predictive piece of ongoing monitoring available, and any buying house operating below that standard is exposed. Ask for the log format. Ask how many factory-months are recorded. Ask what the escalation trigger is. The answers are short, or they should be.
If you want to see the actual wage payment timing log format we run against active factory partners, I am happy to walk you through how it reads in practice.
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