Thank you Phil and JHarker for your advice. I'm hoping it won't get to the small claims stage - we'll have to wait and see.
I won't name the company yet, because it may all still be resolved with a valid reason and an apology. I understand why you'd like to know though!
Unfortunately, the deposit is half of the agreed sum, which is one of the invoices I'm waiting for them to pay. It's a lesson learnt the hard way....
I called my contact yesterday, but reached voicemail. I've left a polite message asking her to email or call me.
If I don't hear anything within the next couple of days I'll email her and maybe copy her superior (who signed the contract). It feels sneaky but need to know it's not because my contact's inefficient!
I started freelancing a few months ago. One of my first clients currently has an overdue payment and I'm not sure how to handle it. I'm sorry that this is a bit long-winded, but I want to give the background!
The client is a large company, which retained me to rewrite a number of pages on its website.
The work that it asked me to do has been sent to me in bits and pieces, which I've promptly completed and returned. Its slow action means that something that should have taken a few weeks has turned into several months.
The company signed a contract, which included a clause specifying my payment terms, including an overdue payment charge.
The contract included paying half of the agreed initial cost at the beginning of the project. I've also completed another small project for the firm outside of the initial brief, for which we agreed a price.
I've therefore invoiced the company for both items, of which both are now overdue.
I sent a polite email with my last piece of work, asking my contact to kindly check-up on the payment date for the first invoice as it was now overdue. She said she'd look into it. Nothing.
I sent another polite email last week (things happen, problems come up, maybe she was busy...), asking if she'd been able to find out because both invoices were now overdue. No response whatsoever now.
I'm going to call her today to ask, again, whether she's been able to find out. Any more emails and I'm afraid the tone might be misinterpreted.
My question (at last!) is, do I hit the firm with the late payment charge? I've only completed half the work (because that's all that's been sent to me) and I appreciate being given the work because I'm starting out. I don't want to get my contact 'off-side'.
However, I'm not a charity and I'm not doing this as a favour for them!
I've recently left the UK to live in Spain; all of my clients are UK-based and it is my target market.
If it all goes well, I'm planning to stay here but sometimes things don't work out. So, I'm currently still registered as a sole trader in the UK (so paying tax, NICs and so on).
I checked with HMRC and I can do this for a maximum of a year (hopefully long enough for me to find out whether things are working out).
I'm also registered in Spain as a resident, which means I'm going to be taxed in both countries. However, Spain and the UK has a double-taxation agreement, which means one should be off-set by the other and I'll only end up paying one set of taxes. I should imagine it's similar in France.
If I do stay here, I will then need to stop operating as a sole trader in the UK and register in whatever capacity in Spain.
So, speak to HMRC and organisations like Business Link. They can provide a lot of advice.
I'm doing some work that I'm charging for by the hour. That means keeping a timesheet but I also have to make a note of how long each element takes me.
If you do similar projects, what do you include as things that take up the time in completing a task?
For example, if you've been working at the computer for a couple of hours, it's recommended that you take a short break. Do you include the 15 minutes it takes to have a cup of tea and a biscuit before getting back to work, if that's what is reasonably expected to do the job properly?
PS - I've just read your profile on your website. Yes, we also moved for quality of life and to escape the London rat race.
We climb a fair bit and it's a real luxury to pop over to a crag in the evening after work! Unthinkable in London. We run and cycle too (to varying degrees) and since we've been here we've also been canyoning. Lots more to try, like sea kayaking and deep water soloing when the sun eventually shows up!
Yes, I recently left full-time employment to move to Spain (my other half was offered a job out here). This prompted my move into freelance web work. It's what I have experience in and really enjoy doing. Luckily, the nature of the beast is that I can work remotely, as you say.
All of my clients are based in the UK (mostly London) and it's where I look for all of my work (it's the market I know and all of my contacts and, of course, my family are there).
It's easy to fly back for meeting people face-to-face, although I try to keep this to a minimum for environmental reasons. I'm currently investigating online conferencing for long distance face-to-face meetings!
Of course, I expect to move back at some stage, but in the meantime I'm gaining another language. I hope I can offer it as one of my skills one day.
nogare, post: 6502 a écrit : Hmmm.... I hate being out of work, but the other alternative is having too much so you don't ever have a quiet day, both are no fun.
When I do have little else to do, I work on my personal website, try and go through as many tutorials on new subjects and skills as possible and also start eating to ease my depressive boredom.... :embarassed
True - on this occasion, I just have a client that is very S-L-O-W at sending the work through. It makes it a bit hard to plan my time for other work because I can't get a new deadline from them (the original contracted deadline was three weeks ago) and I'm expecting the bulk of it to suddenly appear at once. C'est la vie.
ManchesterCopywriter, post: 6520 a écrit : I find networking very time-consuming and it often doesn't lead to any work, so I wish I didn't have to do it. But if your day is empty, you might as well be searching the web for companies who might employ your skills and speculatively contacting them.
Yes, this keeps me occupied too. Especially when I begin to wander off on a tangent because I've seen an interesting article, then another and another.....!
I'm having a quiet week at the moment, waiting for some work to come through on a project, and wondered how you keep yourselves amused when things are a bit slow? Apart from the essential things like marketing, doing your accounts, etc......
Diversification is the way forward (so I'm told) so seem to spend some of my time daydreaming about other ways to make money! Do you combine your freelancing with another 'job', perhaps something totally different?
Or do you have a fall-back way to make some money, which isn't as interesting but pays the bills (assessing media cuttings or something)?
I'm half curious, half looking for ideas!
Helen (off to research part-time extreme sports guiding or pet grooming....!)
I am a freelance online copywriter and project manager. I am in the early stages of freelancing and have been asked to propose some ideas and prices to manage the redesign of a website for a construction/engineering SME.
I have some web design contacts but would also be interested to hear from anybody here with B2B, SME web design experience with a view to obtaining a quote. If you have construction/engineering-related sites in your portfolio, all the better.
I've read all the sites that say starting off as a sole trader is probably suitable in the first instance if you're becoming self-employed.
However, a web designer friend has become a ltd company because some clients require it for tax purposes. I've also heard that some businesses take you more seriously than if you remain as simply a sole trader.
A website can only demonstrate good copywriting skills for that medium.
Copy originally produced for print does not transfer well to websites. It is structured differently, with longer, more complex sentences. Web copy should be more succinct, with shorter sentences and simple layout. This is for good reason - web pages are simply not read in the same way as printed documents.
The advice you were given to bullet point your website content was a good one. It allows readers to scan the copy and pull out the information of interest to them. There are lots of articles about usability available on the web to explain the paths taken by visitors' eyes when they first visit a site.
I would suggest that you make the samples of your printed work available as PDFs in a portfolio section. This will then encourage readers to print articles off and read them in the format for which they were originally intended.
Researching fellow freelancers' websites who provide similar services to yourself may help you to work out what works and looks best.
