Ask HN: As a freelancer, how do you ensure clients pay?

First thing is the payment schedule. I usually do 45% deposit, 45% at the end of the work, 10% when the site goes live. This ensure that I get at least 90% of the contract.

Also, have complete Terms and conditions. One important point is all the intellectual property that goes with your work => until complete payment, the work is yours, and usage of it is illegal. With final payment, I usually issue a letter transferring the intellectual property to the client.

An other important point is all the payment and refund policy. My policy is simple : no refund, projects started are to be paid in full. If the clients needs an explanation for that, explain that while you dedicate yourself to his project, you have to say no to other projects.

Make it easy to get paid. Set up an online payment system or anything that makes the relation frictionless. Even if it cost you a bit, it makes payment way faster to arrive (no need to go to the bank or post office, find the checkbook...).

One saying I like : Until you sign the contract, you have to be the mum of your clients, reassuring him, explaining things, understanding him. Once signed, you are his father : you are here to reminds him the terms of the contract. It means that you have to be thorough on revisions, delivery dates for contents, and of course, payments.

Trust your guts with clients. Usually, in my experience, clients who are hard to get payments from are the one hard to handle from the start. Usually individuals pr small companies, who try to get more for less. And know also that you have the right to fire a client if you feel that things go bad.

But the best way to get paid : make outstanding work, be nice and understanding. Know when you have to charge for a request and when it can be free. Little treats are always nice if it cost you close to nothing and it has value for the client.

I love this one : http://vimeo.com/22053820

Be picky about clients. Payment risk is not equally distributed across all clients, all work, or all contracts. Exercising a bit of professional discretion upfront will save you grief later.

In the famous words of Ben Affleck's character in Good Will Hunting, "RETAIIIINER!"

(for levity) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hWIr9_noRo

Just as with other professional services (Law, Advertising, Accounting), I use a retainer model.

This works for me and filters out the clients who I feel value my work.

For example:

  * $10000 put into an account that draws down against hours worked / daily / weekly output.
  * Invoiced weekly through freshbooks 
  * As retainer moves below threshold in retainer it gets replenished.

This keeps all of us honest, and it keeps me in a cashflow positive situation (usually).

Also, read up on patio11's posts here on HN. He's a smart guy and offers a lot of insights into what it is like to consult for a living.

Amazingly most people do pay (eventually) and the worst thing you can do is obsess about the ones that didn't pay.

When people owe you money it makes strange things to your brain. People may keep you hostage by withholding your money from you. You'll feel terrible. Best thing you can do is chalk up the ones that didn't pay as a cost of doing business and paid learning experience that tunes up your anti-asshole filter. My sanity immensely once I understood that sometimes you get screwed on your investments, it's impossible to avoid that in all cases and it's ok.

This kinda goes against the trend of selling yourself as providing value and not merely your time, but you can also ask to be pre-paid for a certain amount of time.

Similar to a pre-paid cell phone plans, ask your client to buy 10 hours (or 5, or 20) of your time, work those X hours, repeat.

This is the system I've been using myself for the last couple years, and I've never had to worry about getting paid. And I know I'm going to raise some eyebrows with this, but I've never had clients sign contracts either.

We use deliverables, milestones, a work breakdown structure (WBS), and statement of work (SOW) contract.

These describe the scope, schedule, cost, payment agreement, refund policy, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_of_work

When we reach a milestone, we invoice the client for the amount we agreed to in the statement of work.

It generally starts with the type of client you're dealing with. There's a type of client that will pay all the time and there's a type of client that will haggle with you every time. The better you get at learning how to spot them, the less trouble you'll have getting paid.

With my new startup matchist (http://matchist.com), we're actually tackling both these problems (finding the clients that will actually pay on time, every time, and guaranteeing that they will). We vet all clients and escrow payment so that you know you will actually get paid when work is complete.

> What steps do you take to ensure clients pay you on time and what actions do you take when they don't?

1. I only work with clients that I trust. How do I find out if I can trust them? Extensive interview process. Is their business sustainable? Have they worked with freelancers before? Do they have references for me?

2. I have clients pay me up front. No, seriously. I have a contract that lists my rate and asks for the money up front. If they want different payment terms, we can negotiate from there (and usually to a point that we're both happy with).

3. I don't let myself get 'underwater' with a client. I use Harvest to monitor the time I spend working on client projects. It sends me a notification when I get within (80%) of the time allotted on the contract. I have a text expander snippet that I fire off to the client with something like 'Hey, we're at 80% of the time you've paid for on the project' and let them know if I think we'll need more time or need to reduce the scope.

4. I attempt to collect in this order:

(a) Phone call to the company [the person I'm working with on their side] confirming they received my invoice (10 days after due) (b) Phone call to the person who signed my contract confirming they received my invoice (15-20 days) (c) Repeat phone call to the person who signed my contract (30-40 days) (d) Letter from my attorney

How often have I had to use these? Once. Why so infrequently? Because I follow points 1, 2, and 3 with new clients.

Use a contract and set your payment terms clearly; bill at defined regular intervals (with a partial up-front payment).

Make sure there's a late fee, and enforce it! You will almost certainly find clients that don't pay on time, and letting them essentially get away with it will only make it worse.

The one measure I've found that puts honest but lazy clients on the ball, though, is stopping work as soon as payment is overdue and not continuing until they're current (including the late fee).

Sorry, Major edit. I did not answer the question as posed first.

We are primarily a service business that also sells hardware and software, and we design custom databases. The software almost always has "pay as we go" milestones in the contract. This keeps us funded and forces checking in with the client at logical points to make sure the design is going the right direction.

All of our invoices show Due on Receipt, we grant 30 days, then either a cheerful reminder, or a late fee and reminder.

Too many late invoices (three - we are rather forgiving) with no communication ahead of time gets the client dropped.

On the service/sales side:

With new clients or large orders, we ask for deposits or retainers.

We also offer reduced rates of blocks of hours if paid in advance (can help with starting cash flow).

As an aside, we use referral fees paid to people who refer clients to us. Arbitrarily I arrived at 30% of first hour and %50 of second hour (None beyond that) charged to the new client is paid to the referrer (Service work only).

First, it gets us more referrals for work, and second we get to take advantage of the reputational value of the reference - Few people want to flake on their invoices if it is going to make it back to the referrer.

YMMV.

Don't do anything beyond talking before money is on your account.

If you suspect that client might be opposed to paying all of the money up front double the price and take 50% up front. You can give discount afterwards if everything goes well. I noticed it improves relations with the client.

If your project is large and can be split into stages then do that and take all the money for each stage before starting it.

2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. http://vimeo.com/22053820 <-- Watch it!

I invoice weekly. I include a detailed list of tasks completed in each invoice and the time taken per task. I use toggl.com and bill in tenths of an hour. When working with clients with multiple employees/project-managers, I include who commissioned the work and for which project.

Since I check in my code, static files, documentation, and all resources along with the weekly invoice, the payment is due immediately. The client is aware of my progress on a weekly basis and knows exactly how many hours I have spent on which feature. I've worked like this for over a dozen clients and not one of them has ever had a problem with it.

I do not work on fixed-cost contracts but rather fixed hourly rate contracts. I give detailed estimate (Statement of Work) before the contract is signed and if I go over the estimated hours for any task through no fault of the client, I eat the overage costs (teaches me to quote better). If I am under the estimate, I bill exactly for what I worked on.

I think Freshbooks makes it easier to bill (it sends the invoice in an email), easier to pay (they can click on a link and use their credit card) and provides a 3rd party record. Also since its completely online, there is no excuse related to waiting for things to go back and forth in the mail.

Usually if they don't pay right away I explain to them that I need them to always pay within a day or two. If they forget to pay after that, one extra email or IM is usually enough.

You might have to actually call them.

I also tend to not work on a project between the time that an invoice goes out and when it is paid.

From my experience once they are actually aware of the bill they usually pay within 0-3 days. If it takes longer than that, maybe you can get better clients.

Our policy is 50% upfront before any concept meetings even begin and 50% upon completion before we deliver and launch their site. We never do Net terms anymore in the 15 years building web and mobile apps. We sometimes get the "accounting only pays net 15 or 30". Our answer to that is to invoice the balance and schedule delivery when the check arrives. If you are upfront with your terms, they will typically follow your standard. In our experience we had 1-2 clients in the beginning that did net 30 which turned into 60. We were small and cash flow was tight so it meant we needed to float expenses. No more.

1. Get good clients.

2. Get a deposit (ideally one month's pay) up front. If your client doesn't want to put down a deposit, find another client

3. If client doesn't pay you for more than a month, ALL WORK STOPS until you have their money in your bank account.

Problem solved. If your clients are in town and aren't paying, feel free to drop by their office and remind them that you aren't working until you get paid. An in-person reminder is a lot more influential than a piece of paper with a number on it.

Unfortunately, the longer you freelance the greater the odds that you'll find one who doesn't pay you.

In general, I think that being nice to people, having fair billing practices, and doing good work are the best ways to make sure your clients pay on time. As well, when I'm preparing an invoice, I like to email a client and say that I'm preparing an invoice...I usually do net 30 but I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to make things more convenient.

Spending time up front to understand payment terms, calmly, carefully, contractually, means that both sides understand what they are getting into. Nobody would have dared break that word, on both sides. Nobody broke that word. So it sounds like the upfront handshake was either rushed or nonexistent.

Does anyone use a payment escrow? Like what some market places like Elance provide?

I am owed over $1000 by some companies in US and UK for freelance work. Over 6 months ago now. What do you suggest? Forget about it? Debt collection? Contact spouse via Facebook?!

Milestones. For example, half up front and half at delivery. 25% up front, 25% at a reasonable halfway point, 50% at the end. That kind of thing.

Warranty is valid only if invoice paid on time.

payment up front, like a deposit. No money, no work. That simple. No promises either. Listen to Randall for a bit, http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/36071144342/episode-23-as-...

Reward early payments.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Fifty percent upfront. Unless it's a smaller project. Then, it's 100% payment upfront. No exceptions.