

Should I request payments at freelance milestones? - tommaxwell

I&#x27;m using Elance (I know, I know) to make some money on the side, and this is my second client. This time the scope of the project is larger, and it&#x27;s expected that this job will take about 2 weeks to complete. However, in the terms proposed by the client they&#x27;re asking to pay for the whole project once it&#x27;s completed. Does this mean I have to send them everything first, or can they just dispute afterwards if the deliverables they get aren&#x27;t what they asked for?<p>I don&#x27;t really feel comfortable sending everything before receiving payment.
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gexla
First off, the project is only two weeks. How many milestones can you fit in
two weeks? For some clients, dealing with billing more than a couple times a
month can be a pain in the ass. Additionally, you are working on this project
as a side gig, so it's probably not a lot of hours. In this case I would be
fine with taking the whole payment at the end. Just have the client put the
money in escrow. The client could still screw you over, but at least you know
it won't be because of a lack of funds.

On the other hand, since this is a side gig you probably aren't on the same
feast / famine cash flow cycle that most full time freelancers are on. You can
probably afford to be picky. So, if you don't feel comfortable with the
client, just look for another project. For a two week project, I would just do
half down and half on completion.

I don't bother with giving partial work based on the payment schedule. At any
given time my client has access to everything I have done. However, most of my
clients are also developers (or have other developers working for them,) so we
may be committing code to the same repo.

I have never been screwed by a client in years of freelancing. I have had
clients be way late with payments, but they have always been responsive and
sincere when asked about getting a payment. If you are getting screwed, then
you need to look at your process for selecting clients.

Don't get too caught up with it. These payment schemes are meant for managing
cash flow and risk. You probably don't have to worry so much about cash flow,
so your main focus would be the risk.

Personally, I'm not concerned about the risk of losing billable time. My
concern is the risk of my business going under. If I lose a few days pay, I'm
grumpy, but this won't register on my risk radar. Losing out on a payment
sucks, but it's a normal part of most businesses. As long as I'm committed to
the long term of my business and learning from my mistakes then I can accept
the risk of losing billable time. I might hound Joe down the street for that
$10 he never paid me back for the rest of my days, but I can accept losing a
few days of billable time because my client went bankrupt and can't pay me.
So, be flexible and keep your risk management in perspective.

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phasevar
100% of my income comes from freelancing. I build web apps and APIs in
Node.js. I charge an hourly rate and I bill once every 14 days. I only take on
projects that are going to be at least two months in duration and I give my
clients 14 days to pay after being invoiced.

I don't usually have much spare time, although it's not because of my billing
practices.

If you're doing projects that are only going to last a week or two, just get
50% up front and 50% on completion.

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ahmad19526
I would ask them give you 25-50% up front then the remaining after they have
accepted the finished work. I don't know the nature of your work but maybe you
can give give them 50% half way through the schedule and they give you the pay
for that work, then you give them the remainder when it's done and they pay
you back.

I definitely wouldn't trust them with all my work/result and then hope they'll
get around to pay me.

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tommaxwell
Good suggestion, I may try this. Forgot to mention that I'm doing front-end
engineering work as a freelancer. Not confident enough in my Ruby skills yet
to offer those services. :)

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davismwfl
I know this may not be perfectly on topic, but it is the model we use for
consulting. Maybe you can gain some insight: but check out our latest post
[http://blog.tenorent.com/](http://blog.tenorent.com/)

