Getting Your Clients to Pay Up
By: Debbie Campbell
I’ve been following a thread on my Women Designers Group mailing list where one of the designers shared some language from their contract, and a number of others commented that it sounded apologetic. Like ‘if I do this for you I will have to bill you for it.’
One of the respondees was dead on - saying that hey - this isn’t a hobby! This is a full-time (or more than full-time) professional job. There’s no need to apologize to someone you’ve worked for when it’s time to be paid.
I’ve struggled lately with billing for hourly work. Do I charge up front? Do I invoice on the back end? I’ve found that I have a few clients that I always invoice that pay extremely promptly - no worries there. I have a few others that I’ve invoiced once that took weeks and weeks to pay; that won’t happen again. I hate having to ask for money that’s owed me and sound like I’m apologizing for troubling them again, and again…
I wrote a letter that I’m going to send to all current clients detailing the new payment method for hourly work - either:
- purchase a block of time, 2-8 hours, up front at a discount,
- purchase time in 30 minute chunks with a credit card on my website, or
- give me credit card information to keep on file and I will charge upon their approval of the work I’ve done for them (or within 5 business days if they don’t respond to my request for review).
This might not go over well with everyone and that’s okay. I don’ t like rushing to complete a short project for a client then waiting 3-4 weeks for a check, that’s just not cool. But I will continue to invoice my very good clients who have always respected my time and expediency.
