Have you ever worked a freelance job and then had trouble getting paid by your client? It happens. There is a bill going before New York City council at the moment to help freelancers get paid. That's great but not much help if you don't live in New York. What can you do if you have trouble getting your invoices paid?
I have been following this story about the potential new legislation in New York for a while. You can read the full details of the bill here if that's the kind of thing you're into. I'm a full time freelancer so obviously I approve of anything that makes freelancing more viable. According to a report from the Freelancer's Union 71% of freelancers have reported trouble collecting payment at some point during their career. The report is heavily skewed towards the US market but I think it is representative of global trends.
We here at no9to5 have had our own problems with getting payment. For the most part this has simply been clients needing a little reminder to pay their invoices. Most of our clients are small businesses who are always busy. Paying invoices is something that tends to slip down their priority list unless reminded. This is one reason that finding clients through Upwork is great. Upwork does take 10% but all payments are automatically debited from the client's account and paid to you. 10% is not too much to never have to chase anyone up.
There was one time in particular which I wanted to talk about. Back in the early days of our freelancing career Agi found a client through freelancer.com. The client wanted her to do some web research. To make this especially interesting the client produced a sex toy. They wanted Agi to research as many shops, magazines and websites as possible that they could potentially advertise in or sell to. Only the most committed and energetic of perverts could compete with Agi's web browsing history during that job!
When the job was complete Agi submitted her spreadsheet of research; the "filth sheet" as we affectionately named it. There was no acknowledgement. We waited a few days and sent a message asking for feedback and payment. We received a reply saying it was fine and payment would follow shortly. Nothing. There was no response for 2 months.
It wasn't a huge amount of money so we weren't aggressively pursuing it but after we had sent a number of requests for payment we decided to raise a dispute ticket through Freelancer. This allows you to state your case and gives the client a number of days to respond. The dispute prompted a response from the client who apologised saying that the person who we had been dealing with had "left the business". That may or may not be true, we'll never know but they did finally pay up.
So what lessons can be learned?
- Whether you like them or not, the freelancing brokers like Upwork, Peopleperhour, Freelancer etc provide a way to dispute problems. They do cost some money but that's the price you pay for security.
- If you have an issue with non payment don't give up. In our experience we have always received our money eventually. Make sure to keep pestering the client. You shouldn't have to but... life isn't fair.
Until laws similar to the one in New York are enacted everywhere these are pretty much your only options apart from taking your client to court.
To end on a positive note, our freelancer friends and us don't have any horror stories to share. Generally, we do our work and we get paid for it. If you are sensible with who you take as a client and avoid anyone you have reservations about you should be fine. Have you had problems getting paid? We'd love to hear your stories.
