HELP getting paid!

Unpaid bills

1/ Send Terms and Conditions (use other people's as a model, to suit you) before starting work
2/ By law the creators of original material own copyright unless assigned (sold or given) to anyone else. I include in my Terms and Conditions a reference to the fact that I own the copyright until the client has paid fees due.

Thanks very much for that - T & C is a great idea.

Fingers crossed that this is resolved soon!

I would say you should firstly quote for exactly what the client requests.

Insist on a purchase order before starting work. If the cost rises during the job for what ever reason, request an additional purchase order for this.

Once the client is happy, have them complete a sign off proof form.

New clients should pay upon delivery, state this from the outset. If they decline this, then wonder why??

Not many people will pay anything upfront if they are not known to you.

Don't be blinked by business, look at who you are working with, are they a small firm, likely to refuse payment? If so, is it worth doing any work for them.

Many times, you will be sourcing items such as print as part of the job, this is when you need to be careful, it is bad enough if you get taken for a ride on hours of design work, but if you have laid out on 5k of print, then you are very out of pocket.

I usually insist small firms pay upon reciept of artwork in person, no funds, no artwork. I have turned a client away and made them go to the bank and have a bankers draft made up because they arrived empty handed when they came to collect their artwork, when they new my terms for new clients.

If you deal with larger fimrs that will only pay on invoice, get an agreement on when they will pay, some are 30 days, others are 90 days!!!

Keep in mind that if they order 20k worth of print, and your printer expects payment in 30 days, you will have to find that 20k for 60 days!

In general, just tread carefully and don't get blindsided by a big order from a firm that is likely to fob you off in payment and leave you hurt in the wallet.

When I started out, because I was working in the day, I could only really do business at night, not great, but I started to deal with bars and pubs etc, the problem is trhat they are usually run by people who are lets say a little dodgy and did get my fingers burnt on 3 occassions.

The first just blanked us, and knew every loop hole, solicitors, court and baliffs did not get our money back.

The second went bump owing us 1.5k, he called us to say we should scrap the dept and he would sort us out when he could, we manged to get 500 off him and felt lucky at that.

The third was a pub, he was very hard to get hold of, but managed to get him to pay up eventually, when he called again for more work, we toid him his bridges had been burnt and to go elsewhere.

Another bit of advice would be, judge the client, they may want something simple doing, but they may be very fussy and reject endless concepts on a low paying job. It is hard to gauge if someone will be like this, but after a couple of attemps with no real progress, drop them like a stone and move on.

Matt

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.

Edited....

hey all thought I'll let u know how I get about this.
I've had some non payers to in the past but hav found a good solution for that.
I send everyone a design proposal/quote. They sign this to secure the job and then get it back to me with part payment, as in this proposal they agree to let me do the work and also they agree to my terms & conditions and they agree to pay 50% deposit for all design work and full payment up-front for all printwork.
By having them sign this they have a contract with me to protect both sides, but mainly my back. They cant all over sudden pull out when I hav all ready done work, and I never get to pay any print costs.:laugh2
plus if they end up not paying the outstanding balance they have a contract, so every small-claims court will rule in your favour.