Ooh, not good. Sorry to hear you've had a few bad experiences, but thank you for sharing for the benefit of everyone else!
In the situation I'm currently in, there's no way I'd foot the printers bill as well, I'd have to ask that they sort out their own printing or pay me up front; fortunately it hasn't come to that.
I'm drawing up a list of Terms and Conditions and a contract which I think is the best way to get around this happening again. It was stupid of me to go into this without a contract - but it was one of those things that started out as "oh could you do me some business cards... and maybe letter heads and comp slips... oh actually we could really do with some flyers too, and... etc"
Anyway it's now been paid... ish. I'm reasonably happy to chalk it up to experience and lessons learned and all that. Thank you both for your advice and ideas - I'll certainly be treating EVERY job in the future much more carefully and get everything in writing.
Huey you'd probably be better off with a separate bank account, you can do it from your personal one to a point, but if you started getting a lot of work you'd need a separate one anyway, so might as well start as you mean to go on.
Makes it easier keeping up with your accounts, expenses etc
Good luck to everyone, it's also worth noting that the inland revenue send you on free business courses - I'm going to one on the 10th July so I'll let you know if it's worth it!
I was going to wait to see if anyone else replied to this, because I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I'm working full time and freelancing for the odd job here and there in spare time.
When I contacted the Inland Revenue they said you'd still need to register self employed, and then when you get your tax return you just put your full time work down as another income. They then work out the tax you'd need to pay for just the freelance stuff since your PAYE tax is automatically deducted.
Apparently you have 3 months to register self employed from the date of your first invoice. I've been working for friends up until this point but am now doing my first bit of 'commercial' work and, like you, I want to make sure it's all above board.
Anyway my advice would be to ring the Inland Revenue and ask them what is best to do. You don't have to register then and there if you're only THINKING about freelancing, so they won't be on your back about tax straight away!!
I don't think technically that there is much difference now between Macs and PCs - however the one thing I would say is that all the printers use Macs so if you want your work to be compatible with their machines you'd better get a Mac.
I create my work in Illustrator on my PC, but have to print through PDF because although they use Illustrator at the printers, they don't accept PC Illustrator files. It does annoy me a little because I always imagine the PDF file loses some quality (actually in reality, it's probably fine...)
I've been a lurker for some time and learned lots about this freelancing lark from reading all your posts - so thanks for that!
I won't go into the sorry details, but I'm having a little trouble getting paid for some work I've been doing for a small business. I am not about to cut my losses, I will be continuing to take steps to get my money, however I wondered if some of you seasoned freelancers could offer a bit of advice?
I want to learn from this experience and introduce some preventative measures before I start working. For example, how do you quote a client for a job? Do you give them a 'statement' of the process to explain how things are charged, or a flat rate? Also do you take deposits (if so, how much?) and do you get your clients to sign a contract?
Also how do you protect your work before it's been paid for?
Hindsight is marvellous isn't it (she said dryly).
