4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you ensure timely payment from clients?

• gregjor 3y ago
  Break the project up into clear deliverables. Charge for delivering, not for the entire project, and not by the hour. At every step the client can see real progress and you have something tangible to bill for. I have freelanced for 15 years, never had a client refuse to pay. Big companies with bureaucratic payables systems can take time to pay, you have to anticipate that, typically net 30 days. Retainer arrangements also work well if you have a long-term relationship with the client. You get into their payables system as a recurring fixed cost, rather than an irregular invoiced amount.
  • donnie12345 3y ago
    Do you demand some upfront payment from clients?
    • gregjor 3y ago
      I don’t demand anything from customers. Generally I don’t ask for an up-front payment. I commit to a simple deliverable to get started. My rule of thumb says never get into a position where a customer owes me a lot of money, or I owe the customer a lot of work. What “a lot” means depends on the situation. I avoid customers who give me a bad first impression: unrealistic, pushy, stingy, unpleasant, doing something borderline shady. You get a nose for them. The agency that represents me as a freelancer asks for a deposit from new customers, to establish the relationship and get ahead of the billing cycle. But I only get paid when I deliver and the customer agrees.
• ogarten 3y ago
  Give them 1% off if they pay immediately instead of 30 days or whatever is typical. Get some upfront payment (20-30%) to get started. Breaking the project into deliverables bill accordingly. No payment, no further work.
• brudgers 3y ago
  Retainers are the most timely of client payments. Retainers that are applied against final invoice insure all payments are timely. Retainers filter clients who intend to not pay. Retainers are better than contracts. Good luck.
• mtmail 3y ago
  50% upfront payment for one-off projects. That's usual with design work. There might be some push-back but that's how I start the conversation. Unless they came from person recommendation to me. > How will you ensure that he pays on time. Could be any gender of course.
• tikkun 3y ago
  My preferred arrangement with new freelancers: * I'm happy to make a quick payment after a first very small milestone (eg a couple hours of work), to build trust that I do pay (I've had this requested by a handful of freelancers and I'm always happy to do it) * Then, I'm happy to pay weekly at first to build trust, before shifting to every 2 weeks for convenience If they have an extremely legit web presence, once or twice I've made a small payment up-front, but I don't like doing that. For what it's worth, I've worked with dozens of freelancers outside of freelancing platforms (100+, for a broad spectrum of different roles and projects, if you include platforms, but I'm excluding that because payment is handled by the platform) and I think only 2 or 3 times have I had an upfront payment requested, and I think all 2 or 3 of those were designers. If someone requested up-front payment, there's a decent chance that I would use a different freelancer instead. If it was such a specific service and agency that I had no alternatives, I'd do it, but whenever I have alternatives if it's early on, I haven't yet seen that the work is great, I'm always going to avoid higher effort options and would likely instead use a different provider. It also adds a risk for me that they're going to scam me, and is in my experience rare and atypical, so I'd prefer to avoid it. I'm weird though, I also prefer to avoid doing calls with freelancers until I've worked with them for a little while. In short, one option would be to break up the payment. Have a first small payment after a day or a half day of work. Request a quick turnaround on that payment (eg same day or next day, if their billing dept can handle that). Then do weekly (with 7 day payment timelines) for a couple weeks. Then shift to every 2 weeks (still with 7 day payment timelines). General principle: Once someone has sent you at least one payment, the risk is significantly lower that they won't pay you. You're in their system. So, get a small first payment as quickly as possible. I'd be happy to do that with any freelancer. I think that larger companies may struggle to do that due to their billing department, but perhaps you could do something similar but with Net 30 timelines instead of shorter timelines. It also makes me think that another option could be to require a $1 up front payment to get started.
  • donnie12345 3y ago
    How do you ensure that he is adequately skilled for the job ?