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Billing Woes

Billing and the necessity of a Terms of Contract

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  I was talking with an old friend of mine who has been working freelance for the last year and a half. I am thinking of going freelance and asked him if he has any advice.

He works in the IT industry as do i, but i think the points he highlighted can be applied to any freelance work.

Me:
I'm thinking of going into freelance. Any words of advice?

Paul:
don't handle billing and taxes yourself, get a company to do it for you

Me:
Did you have trouble getting the money in some cases?

Paul:
yeah. it can be a real pain

Me:
Did you ever offer delivery upon receipt of payment

Paul:
no. to be fair it hasn't happened *that* often, and usually happens on the smaller stuff

Paul:
where delivery on payment wouldn't really be possible, fixes and the like

Me:
Sure

Me:
Would you bugfix your own stuff for free?

Paul:
if you're gonna handle the work yourself, get the contract and terms of completion done beforehand, so you don't get feature creep

Me:
haha i like that expression

Paul:
sure, the key is defining what a bug is

Me:
Very true

Paul:
people sometimes try to claim a feature change as a bug ("it's not what I meant" etc)

Paul:
you can always sack your undesirable clients though

Me:
But what happens to the contract, billing and the time you have already given?

Me:
Presumably those clients account for most of the headaches.

Me:
If you do sack'em

Paul:
it's all in how you define the terms of completion. you need to be really explicit, so you can finish the work, and move on or continue depending on how things turn out

Paul:
otherwise you end up with "not quite how we envisioned it, can you just..."

Me:
Do you draft the TC yourself?

Paul:
well, it'd be part of the work spec, the design document or whatever you'd call it

Me:
I'd like to see one

... He didn't have one to lend. Watch this space!



 
drew
Sat, 3rd-Nov-2007 2:53PM