The first story seems dead on to a few clients I’ve had in the past. I’m glad (well, not glad, but relieved) that I’m not the only one who goes through this.

I had a client that didn’t pay me £700, despite persist reminders. Then, when his site had a bug a year later, he rings me up demanding that I fix it. Sorry buddy, it doesn’t work like that.

A friend of mine relates a situation where after much hassle and many attempts, he finally went to the local police department and swore out a statement for the man’s arrest. Then he and the sheriff went down to the man’s place of business and, guess what, they wrote him a check right there and then.

Sadly, this doesn’t help as much if you’re not physically near your client, but maybe you can figure out a way.

Frankly, unless you’ve signed a non-disclosure, I think blogging about the company that isn’t paying (carefully! No libel!) might work out.

@Paolo
They will all need something in the future. Unfortunately, some of them will rather turn to another developer then to you and this one will make more mess then fixes.

Clients never benefit for non-payments, but some of them are quite IQ-limited to know that.

I’ve noticed that the clients that are the most positive about payments, saying things like, “oh yeah you’ll get paid for sure, don’t worry about it, you’re quote was reasonable, there won’t be a problem i’ll get you a check soon” are usually the ones that go incommunicado.

One client owes me, $55 for an update I did 2 years ago. I still call them up once a month to remind, and they keep asking me to call ‘tomorrow’. I know, I’m not after the money, just training myself on ‘perseverance’.

I have one client that I have to dun on every project. I still work with them because once I start bugging them they always come through, but payment is delayed every single time. Anyway, one time my bookkeeping got messed up. I still don’t know how it happened, but I thought they had paid me for a project and they hadn’t. Four months after the project was completed and the report turned in, I got a check from them. This is how long it would go if I didn’t start bugging them at 30 days. I learned.

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never been totally stiffed, however. *keeps fingers crossed*

My previous agency used the technique of threatening to take the site down if payment wasn’t made. In every case it worked. I’d hope not to get to that stage but you’ll find they pay pretty quickly if they are facing a blank website.

I had experience it once.. he told me to finish 50pages of the webpages and then he will pay me, after 5days I email him that the request he requested is being done… suddenly he replied my email on the 3rd day after I emailed him, what kind of client is that I though his not like that, be ashame of yourself, and now he keeps on emailing me to add new pages in his website, did I reply him? NOh,… This is my personal experience and that would serve as a lesson to all freeelancers. Thanks. nice article Collis.

In fact, i’ve never had an issue like that, with a client, but I already got one with a company for who I worked as a freelancer. Even if they are a big company well established in my city (and running on big money), they always paid me 2 or 3 months later, saying that they “lost” my bill. (And it was the same for little or big bill). And when they were calling me, the contract has to be finished for yesterday. Fortunately for me, one day, I “lost” all the time I had to work for them…

This is a really good one. One of my past clients kept putting off the payment when ever it was time to pay up. Every time I would got to pick up the ‘check’ that apparently never existed, he kept adding to the job thinking that it wouldn’t cost him more money than what we originally agreed on. So the day before I leave for Germany I stop by one last time to try to get my money. Once I got their he started going over the website again and adding to the list of revisions. When it was time to leave I asked for the check and his words were, “I can’t give it to you today. The printer is broken.” At this point I was ticked, and decided that I was done, money or no money. I wouldn’t try to contact him in the future, take it to small claims, I was just done. Unfortunately I learned a bit later that you don’t even need an actual printed check to get your money. Your client can simply write all of the information on a piece of paper, and sign it. Most banks will take it. There’s a little tip for those of you who happen to run into clients with broken printers. =)

GenoBaby, that sounds like a really cool idea - what did you have to do to get it set up like that?

I had a client who told me over a two month period
(1) the check is in the mail
(2) the check must have got lost in the mail I’ll resend it
(3) I never got around to resending it, the check is in my home mailbox waiting for you, just come and grab it
(4) My husband forgot to put the check in the mailbox for me, it will be there tomorrow.
(5) Later that day, I called the client later and asked if she had time to talk about the payment challenge. She told me she was actually not at work and at home. I told her that was ok and I was driving by her house and would come for a quick visit. I finally received the full payment by standing in her kitchen for 15 minutes while she looked for her checkbook which she must have been “misplaced”. The check was for the full amount of $400.

Early in my freelance career, I had a string of clients in a row who didn’t pay or were severely late with payments. In one case, the client kept telling me that he had already sent the money, and it must be my fault that I was too “irresponsible” to keep track of the payments. It was only after I provided him with partial bank records of mine (which of course didn’t reflect having received the money, because I hadn’t) and basically opened up all my record keeping procedures for his review that he realized that it was an “accounting error” on his firm’s part and remedied the problem (the firm, a marketing company, went out of business a few months later, so I suspect this guy had more than one “accounting error” on his hands).

I decided after those incidents that I was going to maintain a zero-tolerance policy regarding payments. I’m lucky enough to have a lawyer friend who helped me work through some of this stuff. Here’s what I do now:

1. Always work on a contract. In that contact, make the deadline for payment ABSOLUTELY clear (mine is 30 days from the date of invoice, which, according to my lawyer friend, is quite generous — he suggests 10 business days or two weeks, but I’ve found that some of my clients just can’t hack that).

Include a clause to the effect that interest will be charged on late payments. Make the interest rate high enough to incentiveize clients not to mess with you — I do 10 percent of the outstanding amount, compounded weekly for every week the payment is late, starting the day after the due date (meaning if payment is postmarked one day after its due date, you’re already up 10 percent). Make no exceptions. One nice thing about this arrangement is that it makes you less worried about receiving payments late, because hey, if they can’t get it together to pay you on time, free money for you

2. This one should be obvious, but I made this mistake early on, so maybe its worth saying. Don’t do ANY work until you have the contract signed and returned to you. I had a client tell me that he had signed my contract and that it was “in the mail,” so I did probably $500 worth of work for him before realizing that he had no intention of signing the document, and that he was essentially intending on stealing my labor. Luckily in this situation I was able to document (from e-mail exchanges) that I was working on good faith that the contract was on its way, so a quick call from a lawyer got me my money before I parted ways with the client.

3. If you sense a problem on the horizon, log the date and time and take notes on every phone conversation with every person you speak to at the firm you’re working with. This includes assistants and secretaries and so forth.

4. Someone already said this, but if you’re working on the Web, guard any passwords and login information with your life. If your client has already established Web hosting and so forth (meaning they already have the passwords), you can always resort to cheap-ish tricks like using .htaccess to password protect their site until they pay. Remember: you know more about technology than most people

5. Have legal representation at your disposal (but never use it unnecessarily!). Like I said, I’m lucky enough to have a lawyer friend who has helped me out for free in the past, but a lot of lawyers will charge a minimal amount of money to call your client on your behalf and throw a lot of legalese in his/her direction. You can threaten to sue on your own all you want, but a phone call from a REAL lawyer scares the pants off of people. I’ve never had to take any real legal action against any clients; but I have used lawyers to contact my clients for me. In a pinch, I’ve also had my accountant call on my behalf to collect. Make arrangements with a lawyer in advance for these services, so you don’t end up blowing a bunch of money on representation you don’t need.

Hope this helps all… this is one of the most frustrating things for a freelancer.

I’ve been stung badly a number of times. Sub Contracting to companies that have gone bankrupt and another that had it’s Government contract canceled after an ICAC inquiry which left me with a massive debt. But I came out even in the end, when StateRail paid me, and sixty other subs, for three months to do nothing.

In the web boom days I was freelancing for a studio that was paying stupid money for all sorts of unnecessary waste, until they went bust when two big Telstra type clients refused to pay.

I’ve had clients drip-feed me payments over extended periods. Other clients that drill you down to get the best possible price and then demand gold plated service, micro managing jobs until 3am Monday morning and then show up on your doorstep five hours later.

I had another US client that hired ten separate freelancers to do the same job. It was a US based studio that was pitching to Universal and they wanted the best possible pitch. Needless to say that went pear shaped. Then 18 months later they came through with another job, which they fully expected me to take-on despite the previous non-payment. Luckily I was in a position to demand payment before taking on the new job and of course I dumped them just as soon as the payment cleared. But I did have some fun first, it was interesting to see how far I could push it before they snapped.

I think when you start freelancing there are a number of traps, you can easily fall into. But once you’ve been stung a few times, you begin to recognize them.

I’ve not lost out yet, but I have one client who seems incapable of printing out my invoices which are sent via email and requests that an invoice is sent in the post, delaying things that little bit more.

As mentioned above, a contract should be signed before doing any work…….. I REALLY need to start doing this, after 2 years of freelancing, I suppose I’ve just been lucky and not lost out. Hosting, which I also, seems to be the area that I could get stiffed on the most as again I have no contract in place.

Anyone know of a good UK focussed contract template for freelancing and hosting?

I’ve been burned a number of times starting out. (Never do work for someone you’re dating.) Now, I give my clients estimates, then request 50% upfront before starting any creative work, and if I’m brokering the print job too - 100% of printing before delivery. Strictly a business decision if they ask. Not only does it get me motivated to start working on the project, but it keeps the client from being lazy. I’ve also put in a clause on the invoice for late payment penalty of 8% or $50 after 2 weeks, which I have invoked and been paid a few times. So far, so good. The bottom line is you need to relate to your clients that you are a business and expect to be treated like one.

Early in my career I had problems with this, but fortunately I’ve gotten wiser. That doesn’t stop some people from trying to rip me off, though! My favorite was when a well-known musician asked me to do some web work for him. Payment was to be arranged through his manager, and every time I talked to the manager I got some form of runaround. They were trying to “good cop, bad cop” me - the manager doing the dirty work while the artist always acted all eager and confused about why things couldn’t move forward. Of course, I didn’t do the work, and when it became 100% clear to me that they were obviously just trying to suck me into doing free work for them, I politely told the musician that I was sorry, but it didn’t look like things were going to work out. Bye.

The icing on the cake was his response to me. He told me knew I liked his music and admitted he was hoping I would want to “support him” by doing this work for free. I suggested he find a student or a young groupie to do his site, but that he’d get what he pays for, and if he wanted a professional site he would have to pay what it costs to do the work. In the end I saw that he’d gone with a boring template from the label. *sigh*

Unfortunately I have been through this problem too.

I have done a job for a client and another but as a bonus on RAC. And he said hes clients stopped working for him but he kept asking for the PSD.

I have realized he was trying to fool me so I contacted the site administrators. Things worked out eventually but unfortunately my resume had to suffer because of his greed.

Now I have learned my lesson and I don’t make or at least I will try not to make any mistakes anymore.

Deposit (50%) is due upon signing a contract and no work is started until any checks have cleared. I also host the project on MY server until it is completed and final payment is received. Once the final payment is received and cleared with my bank I will upload it to THEIR server, and not before then.

@Henry- Why not mark-up your costs enough to include the fees PayPal charges? Just be sure to tell your client that a 3% fee (or whatever PayPal charges) will be added to cover the processing fees.

I’ll never have another client again without legal documents to back me up. My first client screwed me over by telling me I wasn’t doing the work I said I would. It was early in my career (I am still in college and it was during my first internship) and I told the client this was a learning experience for me. He agreed and the first project went well. The second one didn’t go the way I had planned, but it was the fault of the graphic designer not me (I had promised a newsletter, but I needed the graphic designer to design the layout and art, as we had agreed upon going in). All I got was the condescending partner of the project and no money. The partner said something about having to sell cookies at Wal-Mart to make-up for lost profit. Still not sure how the her little bake sale went.

ZM

I’ve run into this problem before. The first time was early in my career and I won a judgement in small claims court that was eventually collected in full through a collection agency (interest made up the difference of the agency’s charge).

I’ve also had a problem with very large corporations (who don’t pay deposits on “small” projects). I had been doing contract work for a couple of years for a VERY LARGE corporation when the people at the very top decided to start messing with money (withholding outgoing cash to vendors) to look good for shareholders at the end of the year.

It was never a question of IF I was going to get paid, but rather WHEN that would happen. And the client was good to work with and contributed a large percentage of my work, so I had no option but to keep working and waiting to be paid. I didn’t have any leverage with anyone. The people in charge of the department, accounts payable, legal, etc. didn’t have any leverage with anyone… It was all very tight-lipped, behind-the-scenes and unethical, if not illegal…

Three to five months later (according to project end dates), I got paid. Just in time, too. Since then they’ve been on and off with payments and I’ve stopped working with them.

Yup, it’s happened to me too. Luckily only once in three years, which seems like a stroke of luck compared to some folks I’ve heard from.

The one time it did happen to me, I saw it coming but stupidly continued to work anyway. It was the early days and I was hungry! My client’s emails started getting shorter and shorter. His spelling got worse, and the grammar was so awful I almost couldn’t decipher it by the end of the project.

Up until that time we’d been trading screenshots of his desired logos pretty frequently. But on the last set of logos I sent him, because I was feeling suspicious about the whole thing, I covered the final logos with a watermark. I think maybe he figured I was on to him at that point because I never heard from him again. So I learned my lessons too. I’d list them but they can all be found in the other comments.

Thanks, everyone!

I always take 50% before I start. So that keeps clients who are intended not paying you at all at bay. On larger projects I also write small invoices for every full 500€ during a project. If the cash flow is interrupted, the design process is as well. Also its

Anyway, I had troubles with a client delaying payment, here is what I wrote… (got my money though after eight weeks!!!)

Dear Lorem Ipsum,

refering to our skype-chat last monday we decided to wait if the invoice gets booked to my account within this week. Unfortunately the transaction did not happen until this friday morning. The invoice is now out for 4 weeks already.

Please take yourself a moment to realize, that freelancers are generally very dependent on the quick and reliable payment from their clients. There is a rent to pay, a fridge to fill, monthly leasingrates for the computer and software, health-insurance, phone bills and electricity costs. All the stuff that it takes, to make a living of this business. By delaying or refusing payment, you accept the fact that you put your freelancers existence at stake. Thats not the nicest way to say “thank your for your good work!”.

I really enjoyed working with you, but a good work relationship is always based on trust. You trust in me that I will always have a bright idea when one is needed and that I deliver in time and budget, and I trust in your company, that I will get my invoices paid within two weeks.

Dear Lorem Ipsum, I kindly but promptly call you to please seriously start investigating wheater the transaction started from your companies accounting. I know that the delay is propably not your fault personally, but since you were the projectmanager who hired me, you have to understand, that I turn on you with this issue. Attached to this mail you find a copy of the invoice.

When I just started freelancing, I used to do a lot of work for family-friends. One of them owned a limo company. They insisted that they pay a deposit. Being close family friends, I said no its fine. I built them a beautiful website (and charged only $250 - I was in the ninth grade). After I presented the website to them, they asked for a weeks time. I gave them a week, then two, then three. I found out later that they went with some cheap ugly website from Discover Cards (i guess Discover offers ugly websites to businesses for about $50/month). To this day, I see them at random family get-togethers and they never bring it up. I don’t even think their website is up anymore (Thank God, that site was uuuuuuuuuuuuuugly)

There will be always late payments and people that won’t pay, clients that think of their selves art directors and when the job is finished they think they did the whole thing.

I personally had some problems during my freelance career (thank God i am not a freelancer anymore).
One of my most interesting stories was when client stressed me and my mate weeks with small edits and weird excuses to consider the project done and at some point, he just disappeared. No emails, no phone calls … and we said … this is this … let’s go on with another project instead of waiting money from this client.After about 3 month, the site we did, was online and fully functional, so he was actually using what we worked on … and the some crazy idea we had, let’s see if he changed his CMS password. The rat bastard did not … and then we deleted all the content on the website and uploaded gay porn content and sent an email to all his customers, via CMS, and let them know he is in honeymoon and if anyone interested can see pictures from honeymoon on the website.

The site was running this way about a couple of weeks and the he uploaded his old website back.

I think this client will now pay freelancers from that moment … or at least change the CMS password he received from the freelancer.

Or some other thing that can happen, on freelance sites such as rentacoder.com Since the client accepted the project, there is no turning back. if the project is finished the money will automatically get into your account. If there is something wrong during the project, sure, he can put that into arbitration and get his money…but other bad experience I got via rentacoder.com was that client had to option to not pay me, since he accepted the project as completed, but he gave me a bad rating for no reason. All was ok during project. Strange.

So, take care and wish you success and luck to all freelancers out there.

Most of these comments are just war stories, not solutions. This includes the original post. I’m sure every single freelancer in every single career field has similar stories. I was hoping to see solutions… not just read a bunch of “me too” posts. There are few gems in the list of comments though.

What I do….
1) Always get a non-refundable deposit of 30-50% up front. Always. Even if the quote is $50.
2) Invoice immediately after a project is finished so it’s still fresh in the clients mind.
3) Always follow up on past due invoices the DAY they are past due.
4) Be certain you’ve built in an average of 20% loss in your rate schedule since you’ll always be dealing with it.
5) For print work, never supply all necessary files until a job is paid for in full.
6) Web work. For site building follow #5, for web updates be prepared to remove your updates and restore a backup if payment is not received. I can’t tell you the number f times I’ve gotten a check immediately once I restore a site back to how it was prior to my working on it. Backups rule.
7) Keep accurate records and detail on every invoice and past due notice exactly when invoices were sent and for how much.
With each past due notice, add late fees so the invoices increase. These increases will often spur on payment when the client realizes the more they ignore it, the costlier it gets.
9) NEVER do one moment of work for a client once something is past due.

With these posted, I do still have similar war stories regarding payment delinquencies. It’s unfortunately unavoidable with some clients.

Learned this lesson hard and very long ago (9 years to be precise) - unfortunately it was with our very first international client, the client paid via card to our account and then reverted the transaction after we delivered the goods. After this we started asking for advance and wire transfer directly to our bank - this worked but was cumbersome for long projects. Since then have shifted to a pure hourly billing and the clients are sent invoices on Saturday evening. Payment is expected to be made within next working week or the work stops. This has worked very well over the years and limits our exposure to a maximum of two weeks.

That said - we have never had a problem since our first one

I’ve had unfortunately many times that I have not gotten paid One was actually an employer and even if i sued i wouldn’t get anything for a long time cause a) he’s a con man and b) he declared bankruptcy so that definitely sucks. The other was a client I’ve had off and on and this most recent time that he contacted me for work, he contacted me every single day asking how the project is coming along, then I get it to the point where its 90% done and he’s gone no word since. Boooo!

Its annoying to do and feels awkward but as a last resort I found that “breaking up” with the client inspires the client to pay. “Its not working out between us”.. “you would be happier with someone else”… “Its not you, its me?” ohh that one has nothing to do with design…opps! Nobody likes to be broken up with and the naughty client tends to show up with payment and asks to “work things out”.

I’ve had many interesting stories of non-paying clients. As a photographer and designer. I find it humorous when people think that they can use the work I’ve done for them without paying me. I will share a few of my favorites…

1. A friend I worked with was planning to do an art project with body painting (calligraphy text on parts of people’s bodies, etc) and asked if I would photograph it for him. After ranting for 20 minutes straight about how angry he was that people don’t pay him what he thinks is fair value for his work, he told me he wasn’t going to be able to pay me the rate I wanted to shoot his project. When I told him he wouldn’t see the photos unless he paid me - he wrote a check on the spot.

2. Through another friend, I booked a photography job for a very large company taking “headshots” of their executives. After sending them an invoice for this very large job for a deposit, they said that they don’t pay deposits. While a red flag, I knew other people who worked for the same company and they told me they usually paid very quickly upon completion. So I went ahead with the job. After submitting the invoice, I was told the payment would be sent out in 30-40 days. I acquiesced and mentioned that in the contract that any late payments would be subject to fees (10% of the total amount billed immediately the day the payment was late, and every subsequent business week the full balance was not paid). Well, 40 days go by (after reminding them at 29 days, 35 days, and 39 days that the payment was coming due) - I sent them an invoice for the late fee. I was asked what the invoice was in reference to. When I reminded them, they said they would look into it. Another week went by, another late payment invoice. This went on for two months. The original $2000 job was now more than double just because of the late fees. Everytime I tried to call, I would get the run-around. So, I decided to take matters to the next level. I drafted a letter notifying the company that since they had been using my photos without paying me for two months, they had been violating my copyright - and since I could sue them for every instance of copyright violation (and there were hundreds of photos) - we were talking about a rather large lawsuit. A check arrived for the full amount, including late fees, within two days.

3. My absolute favorite story of non/late-payment. A local bar I was a regular at asked if I would create and maintain a website for them. I gave them an extremely fair price based on what they wanted ($500 for the site - including flash and hosting, $50 per update). They paid the deposit, I set up the site and did about half a dozen updates in the first two months (flyers for events, specials, new menu, etc). When I came to them with the invoice for the balance and the updates, they mentioned that business was very slow and they couldn’t really afford to pay at that time (it was during the summer shortly after the anti-smoking bill went through in NYC so it seemed like a legitimate claim) - but they said once football season rolled around they expected larger crowds and would pay me and have me start doing updates again.

Well, football season rolls around - and 5 new large plasma screen TV’s show up at the bar. Still no payment. I ask the owners when they plan on paying and they say “Soon.” A couple weeks go by and a friend tells me that they want to “talk” to me. I figure its about getting things started up again. They tell me they want a copy of the paperwork - I assume they mean the invoice (perhaps it got lost) and I send them another copy. The response? The next time I come into the bar, one of the owners approaches me and asks “What the hell am I supposed to do with an invoice?” My response, “Pay it?” He replies that he wants the passwords for the website. When I ask why he simply responds that he wants it.

After several attempts to contact both of the bar owners, there is no response. I send emails, l leave phone messages explaining that the balance has not been paid and that I still own the design and I would like to discuss why they want the passwords. A couple weeks go by and the only information I get from them is that they want the passwords - ASAP!

So I write them a letter detailing that I am taking the site down, keeping the files until payment is made but they can have the passwords in case they want to go in a new direction. If they want me to continue using my design or having me do updates, they need to pay the balance.

The following week, I am in the bar watching the World Series and the waitress mentions that the owner would like to speak to me. I figure he wants to discuss things. When I am 8 feet away from him, he screams “You are no longer welcome here! Get the f**k out! Don’t ever come back!”

It’s been 4 years and the one time I went into the bar to help a drunken friend who needed help getting home (3 years following the incident) the owner threatened to have me thrown out.

RULE #1 - always get a deposit (even from your friends)
RULE #2 - always make sure your client is aware they will be billed additional fees for late payments
RULE #3 - don’t be afraid to threaten legal action

Regarding the above post.
We always pay our employees.
In fact we are now hiring data entry operators and web design teams.
We had a bad experience with Dave (Vinnyak).
He worked on a shopping cart for one of our clients.
He lost all of the products and the navigation no longer worked and then wanted payment?
I had to recreate the entire site for the client.

Take a look at our site and you decide if we do good work.
We welcome working with anyone and look forward to hearing from you.
Charles