Do You Recognize the 6 Early Warning Signs of Non Payment?
This is the strongest fear for the freelancer.
To work hard for a month on a tough project… and not to be paid at the end. You don’t want this to happen to you. It hurts. You should know to recognize the early signs of non payment and avoid it.
Many freelancers can’t afford or can’t manage to sign contracts with their customers. If you work thru a freelance site you probably will be protected to some extent by their escrow service. But it never makes you 100% safe.
A maliciours buyer may ask for arbtitration, may claim poor performance on your part, misscommunication and other hundreds of reasons that you can think about. If they don’t want to pay, they won’t do it.
Sometimes the buyers have no bad intentions but he simply get lost somewhere and the communication stops. And again you are not paid for what you have done so far.
That’s why you should protect yourself against non paying buyers. The best thing to do is to negotiate partial payments yet at the beginning of the project. After completing some logical unit of the work, you get the corresponding part of the payment. [Expect soon an article on how to negotiate partial payments]
The other must-do is to watch out for warnings signs which may show that the buyer is not likely to pay you. If you see such signs, you should either ask for partial payment - even if not negotiated previously - or just stop working.
Here are the signs I always watch out for:
1. Lack of interest
Some clients are pushing you everyday wanting their work to be done faster and asking you for email reports. Others do not bother you at all. They say “take your time”, they are not in a hurry, they don’t ask you what is going on and they are fine even if you contact them only once per 1-2 weeks.
I am usually happy not to be pressed, because I am too busy. Maybe it is the same for you. But buyers who are too kind in letting you take your time and do not ask you what’s going on, are usually just not too interested in the project. What’s the chance that they simply disappear without even taking your work - and of course without paying it? Huge. From my experience this rate is around 75% of the “not interested” customers.
Don’t procastinate. If you have such a client and he/she is a nice person, just push the things and pull yourself together so the work gets done faster and you get paid. If you let such a person wait too long, they’ll lose their interest, redecide, or simply disappear.
2. Not knowing what they want
This kind of clients are everywhere - not only in freelancing. They want something, but don’t know what exactly it is. They ask for this and that, then for something else and then are not happy again.
You’d better avoid them from the beginning. If the client can’t give you detailed specifications, don’t work with them. Let me repeat: don’t work without detailed specifications (unless you get paid per hour basis).
“But I can’t afford losing all those clients!!!”
Do I hear you saying? You don’t need to lose them. If the client can’t or don’t want to write the documents, you can write them. Ask them questions, propose them ideas, offer them to read and add to or edit the specifications you wrote. This will make you know very well what the scope of the project is - and will let your customer happy, because you have shown your understanding.
If you work on a project without being sure what the project is about, chances are you will fail and won’t be paid.
3. Pushing you to send them files
Ok, in most cases these guys are simply crooks. This time I don’t talk about people who are not interested or don’t pay because they don’t want what you have done. This sign shows that you buyer wants your work for free.
You can always ask for partial payment or offer to upload a demo of your work somewhere on your web server. Don’t send files to someone that you don’t know, especially if you feel pushed to do it.
4. Not willing to make partial payment
Yes, you should ask for partial payments. This is the best way to protect yourself. Divide the project on logical units and discuss payments for each of them. You are doing custom work for someone. If a honest buyer sees you have done some part, there is no reason they won’t want to pay for it.
At this point you can (and I recommend doing so) send them the files on what is done so far - thus you will show that you are also prompt and professional.
If the buyer is unwilling to pay something in front of parially done job, he likely wants to cheat you. You really don’t need to lose your time with such clients.
5. Don’t care about the price
It is not easy to distinguish this warning sign from just a cool and generous client.
Sometimes you just give the exact price and the deal is done. Sometimes your price will be low and it will be gladly accepted. But most often the clients who hire freelancers are searching for a bit thinier prices than those who approach the corporate providers.
Sometimes however in the process of negotiation you may notice the buyer does not really care how much will you charge. On every surcharge you add they agree without paying attention to it (ok, I agree - “without paying attention” is hard to define - you must feel it!). But if he does not care about the price, why would he hire a freelancer?
Be careful with such buyers - sometimes they are cheaters and don’t care about the costs only because they are not planning to pay it!
6. Adding requirements and finding endless bugs
A very boring thing. Some buyers add and add, never are happy with the product and keep finding issues or bugs. It is okay, we are freelancers to provide quality service. But let’s put limit somewhere - which of the issues is your fault and which not? What was in the requirements and what was not?
Very often such buyers are simply searching for excuse not to pay. The best thing to do is to ask for partial payment again. Even if you are almost ready and you get only 50%, it is still much better than working on the endless fixes and never get anything.
Not getting paid for completed job is one of the most frustrating things which can happen in your freelance career. You can do very little after that happens, so isn’t it better to try to protect yourself before? Try to recognize the 6 symptoms of the non-paying customer listed above.
And finally, don’t give up. Non payment happens to everyone, if/when it happen to you, don’t get frustrated, but try to get the most of that lesson.
Filed under: Freelancing