Billing is one of the harder parts of freelancing. You’re done the work and waiting to get paid.

Outside of simply not being paid (which has happened a few times and sucks huge) one of the biggest issues clients bring up is how you count when something is paid.

Just last weekend (as I’m winding down any projects that weren’t weekly billed) I sent a few emails back and forth with a client about interest charges.

They felt that if they put the cheque in the mail before the due date then it was paid on time.

As far as I’m concerned an account is paid in full when I have the money (as in it’s cleared in my account) not when the cheque goes in the mail. You’ve had 10 days to put it in the mail, why did you wait for the last day or just send it the day before it was due?

My Ultimate Solution

The way I really solved this is to simply move to weekly billing and payment for the week in advance. If you haven’t paid me on Monday I’m not working for you. If I haven’t been paid on Tuesday I’m working on something else that is paying me.

Now I’m never waiting to get paid and arguing over when an invoice is ‘paid’.

How have you dealt with invoices and counting them as paid?

photo credit: Steve Snodgrass via photopin cc