Payment of services, receiving bribes, exchange for information, Dollar bills 2019
Freelancing feels like the Wild West sometimes. There’s no HR department, no accounting team, no required trainings to ensure you don’t offend the other employees.
While this has its benefits—you don’t need to be taught how not to offend the other employee when you are the other employee—it comes with downsides, too. For instance, you might not get paid, which is, in some sense, the point of a job. I’m among the 54% of freelancers who have reported working with a client who doesn’t pay, and I assure you, it makes my blood boil. I once bought myself a book on the art of Zen Meditation after firing off a very aggressive email to a client whose $4,000 payment was four months late. I mean, in this inflated world, that may as well be $40,000! The book was a bad idea, though, as I didn’t read it, and I shouldn’t have spent that much money, on account of not being paid on time.
That client did eventually pay me, but late payments are a massive issue; 74% of freelancers report not getting paid on time. As a freelancer, it’s very frustrating to not know when I’m going to be paid, because—spoiler—my rent is due the same day every month. I can’t just explain to my landlord that I’ll pay him after my client finishes their transition to Worksuite. Trust me, I’ve tried.
Prepare Yourself Ahead Of Time
There are several things a freelancer can do ahead of time to protect themselves. Before I accept a job, I ask when I’m going to be paid. The client is not always able to give me a clear timeline, though, because the payment sometimes doesn’t begin processing until the work has been completed, which means the holdup could be on my end—or whoever signs off on the finished project. I once demanded payment on an essay, only to realize the final version was still in my draft folder (sometimes Gmail is weird about hiding drafts though!).
I also recommend including the terms of payment on your invoice, so the client knows exactly when you expect to be paid, and even asking to be paid in multiple installments, so you can confirm their intent to pay. The other benefit of multiple installments is you have more paydays, which means more excuses for $60 Ubers and splurging on a new scarf that you definitely need because it’s mid-July, if you’re me.
Start Politely
Even when I try to avoid late and non-payments, they still happen. If you expected a payment a few days ago and it still hasn’t arrived, send an email to all your contacts from the client (it sounds dramatic, but in my experience, this is usually just the person who sent me the contract and the person who hired me), to ask about the payment.
Everything goes down more easily if you’re polite—that honey vs. vinegar parable is true, except who wants to catch flies? However, if your first few emails get ignored, I certainly can’t judge you for turning up the heat (you can always borrow my Zen Meditation book afterward). But remember that the people you’re emailing with may not be the ones responsible for sending the payment, so try not to shoot the messenger.
Check Your Legal Options
Worse than late payments, of course, are the clients who don’t pay at all. If your emails (or varying politeness) requesting payments have been consistently ignored, you might need to consider legal action. There are a few things to keep in mind before going this route.
“It's important to assess whether you could actually collect a judgment against the client if you prevail,” says Robert Freund, an attorney focused on advertising and e-commerce issues at Robert Freund Law. “Some clients may be unable to pay the judgment or refuse to do so, and collecting may involve additional time and expense.”
If you decide to proceed, you can start with an intent to sue letter, which hopefully will scare them into paying without you needing to actually sue. Depending on where you live, there may also be freelance-specific programs to help get the client to pay without involving a lawyer. If all of that fails, you can seek out a lawyer who specializes in small claims.
I spoke with freelancers who did contact lawyers. “The client stopped responding to my emails about unpaid bills,” says Foster Gunn, 40, a digital marketing freelancer. “I got impatient and sent her organization several emails and had no response. Finally, I decided her silence had been too long, months had passed, and I called a lawyer friend of mine.” Gunn never went through with the lawsuit, but he learned something from the experience. “After that, I learned to take payments before my services. I use an online payment system that allows my clients to book services directly and make their payments before my engagement starts.”
While it is your right to get the law involved, I can’t say that I ever have. I have a few outstanding payments, all under $300. It’s a massive abuse of power for someone to not pay a freelancer, regardless of how little they owe. In these cases, they’re taking advantage of the fact that it’s not worth my time to track down an extra $40, but that’s a whole scarf I’m missing out on, and it’s wrong. It’s an unfair tax placed on freelancers, but it is the reality. If you don’t sue for a non-payment, you are allowed to list the nonpayment as a loss on your taxes.
When I don’t get paid, I feel wholly powerless. I often consider publicly shaming companies on social media, but I never have. I think it would make me look bad, but so do most of the things I post online (I have a habit of asking my Instagram story-viewers to diagnose strange skin conditions). More importantly, I doubt it would help. I’ve seen tweet threads about one client of mine and how their rates are horribly low, but it’s never inspired them to boost their rates.
The only thing I feel empowered to do is to walk away from a bad client. And depending on the state of my own finances, I don’t always feel empowered to do even that. It’s infuriating, and maybe the only solution is Zen Meditation. That, or hiring a lawyer.
