Irritating email exchange of the week

Between me and a committee that will remain nameless:

Dear all,

At our last meeting, we decided that we would pay me for my website work in advance to use up the funds in account X that are due to vanish at the end of December if unused. See attached minutes. [Guy in charge of account] informs me this would need to be processed immediately in order to take place in time. Just checking this is still okay.

Styleygeek.

Dear Styleygeek,

Go ahead and send in an invoice. The amount in the account is $1116.80. Please invoice for the whole sum. We'll sort out your hours later.

Chair of Committee.

Dear all,

Chair says to go ahead, so I've sent in my invoice for $1116.80 to admin (copy attached). Please let me know if the information on the invoice is sufficient.

Styleygeek.

Two days later, the chair sends the following email to my advisor (not even cc-ing me: I only heard about it later).

Dear Styleygeek's advisor,

Styleygeek appears to have sent us some sort of invoice for her website work. You need to talk to her about this. For one thing, I'm not sure she should be invoicing as a contractor, but rather needs to fill out a timesheet with the work as she does it. For another, she has invoiced for the entire amount of money in the account, and this doesn't leave us enough to also cover tax and benefits. [Note: hence my invoice as a contractor, since then it is MY responsibility to pay tax out of the total sum received, and they don't have to cover benefits. I thought their first mail made it clear that this is what they wanted, since they asked for an invoice, not a timesheet, and told me to charge them the whole remaining sum.]

I wonder if she realises that she would need an ABN in order for us to process such an invoice [uh, yes. That's why I put my ABN on the invoice I sent in] and that she would also have to pay taxes [duh]. Maybe we should talk about this at our next committee meeting [in July].

Chair.