Collecting Payments in Your Home Business
July 10, 2007 by Mary Emma Allen
Most customers/clients pay well and as agreed. However, no matter what type of home business you’re involved in, you’ll run into someone who is late with their payment or doesn’t pay at all.
I’ve not encountered many who didn’t pay me. I found, when someone was late, the situation usually could be resolved.
Laura Spencer, at Writing Thoughts, relates a situation she encountered, The Case of the Missing Payment – Happily Resolved. Then Laura mentions four tips to ensure you receive your payment in a timely fashion.
Of course, Laura’s examples generally relate to writers. However, the tips she gives can be applied to other home businesses to help keep you from encountering a payment problem.
I’ve also found when doing a job for someone or making an item, such as a quilt, I get payments in increments. That way people are more likely to pay. If they don’t you aren’t out the full amount for your work.
Thanks for linking to me. I did think about how the situation might apply to other freelancers. Of course, my main experience is with writers so that is how I wrote it.
One reason that I wanted to post about it is because I see a lot of rants on blogs and message boards about not getting paid. Usually the poster says something like this, “that crummy company ripped me off. They took my work and now they won’t pay me. I’m never working for them again. I’m going to tell everyone how lousy they are …” And so on, and so on …
I wanted to let people know that there was an alternative. Hopefully, I’ve helped avoid taking the lousy projects in the first place and shown how to handle it when a payment does happen to be slow.