Your client pays late and you are funding it

You deliver in March, your money arrives in June

Skift Meetings reports that suppliers in the events industry are being paid later and later. The magazine calls it what it is: you have become a zero-interest lender to your own client. It argues for industry-wide standards on upfront payment.

I see the same thing with almost everyone who works for larger clients. You deliver in March. Your money arrives in June. Nobody is difficult about it, nobody makes an angry call. It simply slides. At the client's office it is called cash flow. At your end it is called an overdraft.

Do the sum

Say you structurally have 8,000 euros in invoices sitting open sixty days longer than agreed. Then for two months you are lending 8,000 euros to a company bigger than yours. No interest. No contract about it.

You pay for that somewhere. Out of the interest on your overdraft, or out of your peace of mind: the Sunday evening when you open your bank account and decide to do nothing with that feeling.

The sum is not complicated. It just never gets made, because nobody sends you an invoice for being paid late.

What a bookkeeper costs, and what waiting costs

Self-employed people search for what a bookkeeper costs and what it costs to outsource invoicing. Fair questions. But the biggest item appears on no quote at all: the money that is already yours and is not yet in your account.

Look into payment terms for freelance invoices and you find out quickly that you are allowed to set a term yourself. You are allowed to ask for a deposit. You are allowed to write on your quote when you want to be paid. That is not cheek, that is putting your conditions in writing before the work starts.

Getting angry afterwards buys you nothing. It costs you an awkward phone call and often next year's booking as well.

What you can do with this, starting tomorrow

Three things that are in your own hands:

• Ask for a deposit. Part on booking, the rest on delivery. For a job that sits months ahead, that is completely normal.
• Put your payment term on the quote. Not on the invoice afterwards, but in the document the client signs.
• Let the reminder go out automatically. Send an automatic payment reminder on day one after the term, and another a week later. Friendly, short, always on time.

That last one is the work I exist for. I keep track of which invoice is open, I send the reminder, I tell you who still has to pay. You never have to have that conversation, because the email was already there. Thirty-five euros a month, cancel any month.

And do the sum first. List what is open right now and how many days too long. If it turns out fine, you do not need to change anything. I will tell you that too.