Pay is constantly paid late with no explanation
I work for a small business that probably has no more than 15 employees. As we are such a small business we don't have a proper payroll system. Until recently we all submitted our hours manually and these were submitted to an external accountant who calculated net/gross pay etc. These figures would then be sent over to our manager who would manually pay us all by bank transfer. Our payday is listed in our contract as a set day, but due to the nature of how we were paid this was always delayed by at least a day if not two. As such there was then an extra clause to our contracts stating that even though payday should be a particular day they had the right to pay us up to five days later.
Recently we have entered the 21st century and now clock in via an app. This app then links to a pay system that automatically calculates our pay without the need for the accountant. It is still a manual bank transfer though. In theory this should mean there is no delay in our pay as we're not waiting for an accountant to calculate our pay. This isn't happening and sometimes we're still waiting for days after even if our payday doesn't fall on a weekend.
The business is one that our clients are required to pay their bills by the end of each month. Our payday is supposed to be the second of each month. It's rumoured that the business is failing badly so we're surviving from month to month. It's been suggested that until all the previous months invoices are paid up then we cannot be paid as there's no cash otherwise. I understand that our contract states any time from the 2nd of the month up until 7th, but this is just incredibly inconvenient especially when one month we can be paid on the 2nd then the following month 7th. Is there anything that can be done? I'm struggling some months stretching my pay for those extra days which is incredibly frustrating when I've had my payslip for nearly a week so I'm just waiting on my manager to send it over.