Nobody likes to chase money, when I decided to go full time (or close enough to) as a freelancer the last thing on my mind was how much time I’d wind up spending thinking about, worrying about, dreaming about; money. I far prefer to do the design & production work, than to do my books. I am very fortunate in that my clientele pay me on a reasonable basis, for which I am deeply grateful. It wasn’t always this way. Back in the early days when I made $7,000-$10,000 in a year if I had a client fail when they still owed me over a thousand bucks, that was a hard blow to take. I never did see that money. I threatened to go to collections, but the company dissolved once the property they operated out of sold, and the equipment was auctioned off for parts. It still hurt me deeply. So now I will send an invoice monthly, rather than wait for a potentially months long series of projects to come to a close. You may not see every penny, but remaining afloat will relieve a bunch of stress, and leave more brain power to focus on the quality of your work, and not developing grey hairs from stress.
Do with that information what you will. If you wait too patiently to submit an invoice the AP folks may not honour it as it’s too far out of date. You really need to know a clients payment habits, and SOP when it comes to submitting an invoice. That kind of mistreatment should sour a relationship immediately. Rush to supply them artwork, but wait 90 to 120 days for a partial payment. These types of groups should be avoided. Pure aggravation. Do not reccomend.
My personal goal is to get popular enough that I can work forty hours a week, have five weeks of vacation time to be with my kids, and make enough to save for family trips, entertainment, and to cover off various peripheral living expenses with the household. I don’t think I’d ever want to get big enough to have to take on staff, and rent premises to operate out of. That’s too much stress and worry, and requires an awful lot of capital up front. Yikes. Then I’d need HR policies, training guidelines, be looking after hiring & firing. All the management style stuff I detest. I just like the work. I like designing and solving art based problems. I’m done with people and office politics, and all that additional stress. Yuck! How are you supposed to sleep at night when you now know you are responsible for the gainful employment of others. Argh! No. No thanks. Making payroll while waiting on clients to pay! I guess at that point you’d have to institute a retainer system, and then charge over top so that you always had some funds available from every client on hand to pay for fixed costs (think rent, insurance, subscriptions, payroll, heat & hydro), and then top that up, make your profit from the big ticket invoices once those actually get paid. I can only imagine how much time and energy an agency is required to put into client retention, and growth for finding more paid work, or partnerships for tasks you’d like to outsource. Boggles the mind how intricate this sort of thing can get.
Anyway. It is early Saturday morning, and my oldest is out doing Ringette lessons, coupled with power skating. Had to have new skates and a brand new helmet in order to participate. It was offered to the youngest too, but she turned her nose up. I think she regrets that choice now, after the new helmet & skates turned up for the older one. Wait listed now, so no chance she gets in to the program now. Stouffville is big on skating, and ice pad related activities.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 