it doesn’t work if they are insolvent, and it can also backfire if they see this clause as a way to get a cheap cash loan. you should still have the clause but i think if this as a tool for the collections attorney to use if the customer defaults.
upfront billing of professional services (“consulting”) is worse for a few reasons, (1) requires the customer to trust you more (they cannot withhold payment if you screw them or violate the contract) but generally the service provider is the riskier party (2) it causes service gaps (lost billable days) when the customer is late which is almost every month, (3) it requires you to define in advance exactly how many units will be billed and causes a service gap when you hit the retainer limit, (4) it gives the customer a natural ability to throttle billable hours which leads to unpredictable revenue. This all leads to higher bill rates, which is less palatable than a commitment to full time services contract. everyone involved wants predictable spend.
if this is an annual renewal payment for a saas, you need a process to follow which must include 60 and 30 day notices before the invoice, the rest varies greatly based on size - is this $1200/yr (credit card auto charge) or $120k (high touch sales rep)
It surely depends on what the OP is providing. If I was a consultant and the company stopped paying, I would obviously stop working for them on the next day. Otherwise, you could start charging weekly or daily instead of monthly. But then again, if they're not paying...
If I was providing a software or utility, the second you stop paying you are out. This actually happened to me in Japan because my mobile provider stopped sending paper invoices so I forgot to pay. I got cut off without any warning and as soon as I paid I got my access back.
this does NOT need to be explained. They have accounts receivable too. They know how this works. Put the process in the contract and follow the process.
net 30 terms, invoice exactly on time NEVER late, “please find attached invoice N, also kindly following up on invoice N-1 which is now past due”, each invoice lists invoice history and payment status (red if overdue), solvent companies will respond, insolvent companies will ignore, send a polite second reminder at 1 week, all solvent companies will respond and remedy here, if no reply send notice of breach at 2 weeks, even insolvent companies will reply to this, they will lie and tell you payment is en route but it will get stuck over some technicality, follow breach process exactly, disengage services after cure period expires and hand it to collections. If your customer is not communicating with you about invoices THEY ARE NOT SOLVENT. If payments are slowing down and tardiness is increasing, they are not being forgetful, THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. They are fundraising behind the scenes and they are hoping for the best while transferring risk to you, or their customer is delinquent and they are aligning payments to transfer that risk to you. Most customers see themselves as good and honest, they are mostly not supervillains trying to screw their counterparties at every opportunity, but they are also taking on hidden business risks and they are underwriting that risk with assumptions like “this payment aligns with this source of cash and everything is balanced and proper”. The moment their assumptions are violated, the moment a risk appears that they don’t consider part of their risk model, or a hope/expectation did not pan out, they will experience anxiety and fear, they will tighten their control over their cashflow to try to establish agency and fortify themselves against the threat.
The relationship is NOT more important because THEY ARE NOT SOLVENT. Do not allow subcontractors to send their own invoices, you must do this yourself to ensure that all communication is exactly on time and never late. Lateness and inconsistency on your side erodes your ability to run a tight collections process, because if you are lackadaisical about payments then they can be too. When you lose control of collections it is not because of text vs email or language, it is because you don’t respect your own process and therefore they don’t respect it either. And when the water gets choppy, they will not think twice (they will not even think at all) about pushing on boundaries because you did not clearly establish them. They are facing a threat, their amygdala is in control, they may not even consciously realize they are doing it. But your process will make that boundary a bright red line, it will force them to make screwing you a conscious decision. And you will know exactly where you stand at all times.
hiring criteria is not uniform, it varies widely across all companies. Keyword driven hiring + contrived interviews that are disconnected from the actual work being performed (but easy to evaluate - this is substitution bias) has damaged engineering culture everywhere. The easy money period of 2018-2022 exacerbated these trends by removing accountability and causing rushed, loose hiring.
real answer - have generational wealth, attach the documents to your trust. This should last either until your nation’s currency collapses or the trust value does.
Trust documents are usually held privately, and not publicly recorded (as their entire point is to shield this estate planning and asset holding from the public). If you put it in someone's will, upon their death the will would be recorded and it would persist as long as the jurisdiction does maintaining the will on file.
For high reliability, I think I would suggest engraving it into a low reactivity nonvaluable metal, perhaps titanium sheet would be a good choice. Couple that with a backup on printed archival paper using carbon toner or an art-grade ink or dye. Between the two of them they will probably resist damage for 100 years or so.
Brass or bronze would also be a decent option, but you'd have to make the text larger for it to be readable with corrosion. Perhaps braille would be an interesting choice there.
And ceramics are a great choice - clay tablets, when fired, can last millenia.
I think between the three of a metal sheet, clay tablet, and paper book, one of the three is almost certain to survive a century.
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