How Creatives Can Encourage Quick Payments When Working Freelance
We’ve all experienced waiting for a client to pay! However, it’s quite another to be a self-employed creative, or perhaps just a creative working freelance, and to not be paid until a final deadline. Good practice often suggests that we should give our clients a little time to pay fully, perhaps taking half up front and then half upon delivery.
Depending on the nature of your job, this can differ. Wedding photographers will often use that fifty-fifity system, just because their clients want to feel happy with the product and request any edits before the relationship is fulfilled. However, because creative work can sometimes be sporadic, it’s not easy in all contexts to wait around. If you can, encouraging payment sooner rather than later is going to help you with your own cash flow and planning. It may also help you avoid long, drawn out disagreements that will only frustrate.
In this contributed post, let’s discuss how to achieve that:
Accept Payments On-Site
If you have the ability to accept a payment on site, such as a card reader for your phone, then that can inspire people to make sure you’re compensated for your work there and then. For instance, if you shadow a property agent taking pictures of a few properties that day, you can quote the price, submit the document and pictures, then return to the office and be paid for your work.
That might seem a little forward, but if you’re owed the money, you’re owed the money and advocating for yourself, right there in person, will likely cause someone to avoid running you around or waiting until the last moment to pay.
Write Up A Contract & Deposit System
If you ask for a deposit that can be returned upon full payment, then you’re going to give them an incentive to pay you completely. Perhaps that could be for the cost of equipment or to cover your own expenses in the interim.
If you have a strongly written contract, looked over by a legal professional (you can have this done at any local solicitor or law firm), you can make sure you registered small-time sole trading practice is protected from uncertain terms that would have otherwise been present in verbal agreements.
Document Everything & Offer Incentives
Like when managing your financial planning, it’s wise to have an indexed system for tracking your daily communications and habits, so you can refer to agreements, quotes and requests from before to prove your claim to payment if you have to escalate it. However, it’s better to use a sugar cube than a stick, so offering incentives like a 5% discount if they pay immediately may be worthwhile and helpful to your cash flow.
With this advice, you’ll be certain to encourage quicker payments when working freelance, which will help you support yourself more readily and curate a better sense of business practice. It’ll also show clients you’re to be taken seriously, which unfortunately some creatives can struggle to assert.
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