I think I am almost behaving like a victim of emotional abuse WRT to this bastard client, please help me toughen up or something...

[bitmessedup]

I have been doing work for them for over a year, they have never paid on time or without a lot of phone calls and pleading. They have now not paid me for four months. Nothing seems to work WRT making them pay, they say they have 'cashflow problems' and are asking freelancers to 'work with them on this'. They are still commissioning work and trumpeting the fact that they have acquired some more titles. The two editors who commision me are friends (but not remotely in charge of the chequebook).
They always say its a temporary problem, and more than once they have paid an overdue invoice and paid the next one at the same time, a week early. So I find myself feeling that I can't just go after them and shut them down because a) I have put up with this for a year and b) they have sometimes paid one invoice a bit early along with the very overdue one.
I don't know what to do. I think I am about to be made bankrupt by creditors now.

Is this still ongoing? I'm sure you've posted about this before, haven't you?

Have you no other major source of income?

There have always been some businesses that are rubbish at paying on time - large bureaucracies and public sector seem to be really bad, for no apparent reason other than crap / complicated systems. Many small businesses need to factor this into their cash flows plans from the outset, and often only remain viable by building up some lind of cash reserve.

Over the past year however, delays in payments seem to be occurring more frequently. One company I work for has real cash flow problems - they obviously have to pay their employed staff on time, but they are only paying freelance contractors when they get paid by the relevant end client.

I guess you need to address the problem in a variety of ways:

1. immediate risk of bankruptcy - (assuming your business is viable in the long term) what can you do to get a temporary cash injection? Can you negotiate with your suppliers? Can you find a temporary investment? Can you realign your personal finances to make a personal loan from you to your company?
2. impact of late payment - what costs do you incur in running your business? Is it mostly your time, or do you have costs that you incur in carrying out a contract (staff, travel, materials etc). With one particular customer, I have agreed that my out of pocket expenses will be paid within 2 weeks, and that I will wait up to 2 months for payment for my professional time.
3. diversify your income streams - difficult in the current climate but really important, and results in you feeling less dependent on your key client, therefore more in control and in a stronger position to enable you to behave less like a "victim".

Do you have any sort of business plan? Is there someone who can help you brainstorm some ideas? If you could think of 5 possible things you could do for each of the 3 questions above, then you have at least the option of 15 different actions you can take to get your self out of the cycle you are in.

Good luck.

Thumbunny: Yes it's still ongoing . Notsoclever: I'm a freelance writer so there's no expenses I can claim for (it's mainly book & DVD reviews and the odd features, they supply the DVDs). I have a new client who looks pretty good but I ahve only just started working for him so not yet in a position to manage (and I do get tax credits etc and my other client pays properly...)
I keep thinking that I ought to cut my losses and simply go for the small claims court but a) some of the people who work there are friends and if I take the company to court it may force them into insolvency and lose all my mates their jobs and b) it cost £80 to file a claim and I simply haven't got £80...

Oh arse forgot about namechange.

Ok, solid, I may be teaching you to suck eggs here but here goes. I don't know if this will work for you, but I always use the NUJ interest calculator, sorry no link but go to NUJ webstite which is FAB. All you do is put in the amount you are owed, when it was commissioned/delivered and your standard terms. It will then calculate interest owed. Then a phone call to the a/cs dept saying 'well, I'm afraid my payment terms are X days and it's so overdue that unless I receive payment this week, I'm going to have to add on interest, which currently stands at £x' is usually enough to get a cheque/BACS payment immediately. HTH!

If you don't get the full amount, I would ask for an interim paymen of a third of the invoice with the rest to follow next month.

BTW are you in publishing?

You will have to become a thorn in their side, and phone them up every day to hassle them for payment. Four months without payment and no commitment from them when they will pay you is completely unacceptable - this is not 'working with them' but them taking something for nothing. I think you need to negotiate a payment plan so that you receive the full payment over the next two months or so as suggested by tdd, but I doubt if you'll get anywhere with threats to add interest unless this was specified in your ts and cs, and even then it's unlikely to work ime.

mable - I'm speaking from experience here re. interest I've done it myself several times with bad payers with good results The thing is to be polite and courteous to the point of being apologetic about it. IME if you're speaking to a small co, their accounts guy will pay a relatively small bill rather than having to explain to directors why it has gone up.

The addition of interest is also standard EU law unless your contract states otherwise. FWIW I always state these terms on my invoices.

From NUJ site, see: www.londonfreelance.org/interest.html

'Under EU regulations effective from August 2002, payment is due 30 days after your client became aware of how much they owed you, or after you delivered or did the work, whichever is the later... If payment is delayed beyond this date interest is payable at a penalty rate, plus compensation for debt recovery costs. In the UK the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 allows you to claim interest, but no compensation, on contracts made after 01/11/1998 - though Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) were exempt up to 01/11/2000... So the EU backs up the NUJ's longstanding advice that the payment clock should start ticking as soon as the work is delivered. Publishers want to count from publication, which is one reason they set up so-called "self-billing" systems.'

I'm pleased it's worked for you tdd. I too am speaking from experience in a previous job, only from the other side - if companies (large or small, or sole traders, whatever) threatened to add interest to outstanding accounts it would have had no effect whatsoever and we certainly would not have paid it!

mable, are you an accountant by any chance ;-)

I have pointed out to them that I am entitled to charge them a fixed penalty of £40 per overdue invoice (that London Freelance site is great on the info, thanks TDD), they take no notice and I have been told by one of my mates in editorial that what usually happens then is that the editors are told to blacklist any freelance who does that...
Still not been paid BTW.

I was never, ever told to do blacklist freelancers, even ones who were nightmarish to work for and that's working inhouse for indie and international outfits for (too) many years. Are you chasing accounts direct or going through your mates in editorial? Do you know anyone higher up? Don't know if it's an indie or one of the multinationals, but how about popping in for a 1-2-1 with the editorial director? Explain how it is impacting on your cashflow and that you need some sort of payment plan from them. Sorry for the twenty questions, just trying to get a better picture of your situation.

No, not an accountant .
Solidgold - you need to be on the phone to them first thing in the morning to sort out a payment plan. Presumably you do not want to antagonise them and would like to work for them in the future (assuming they have a future) - unfortunately the power is all on their side. In future, would it be feasible to ask for part-payment up front (from them and other organisations you do work for)?
Polite but firmly persistent is the way forward

I am dealing with the accounts department (no good dealing with my mates in editorial, they have no control over accounts) -part of the most maddening aspect of this is the accounts dept's tendency to leave their phones on voicemail for days and never return calls. Nothing seems to be working on them this time (in previous months, though they have never paid on time, two or three weeks worth of sustained pressure has usually got the money out of them), not threats, not pleading: requests for a part-payment plan get 'Well, someone will call you back' - they never do; a couple of days later I finally manage to get through to someone again and get 'Sorry but we can't do anything this week, call us again at the beginning of next week.'
Because they take so long to pay anyway (40 days after the end of the month of publication, which is something like 4 months after the work is actually done) by the time they started playing up I had several invoices due to be paid over the next few months and didn't want to jeopardise those IYSWIM.

I'm really surprised about this. I used to ave to draft my own agreements with freelancers for editorial work as part of my job, and IME has always been standard to pay in three parts - signature of contract, delivery of m/s and final text edits (or publication).

Speaking on this side of the desk as a FL, even if I'm working on smaller jobs, I always invoice on delivery of work rather than publication. In fact, i was rather put out when I had monies held back from a job in case there were corrections at a/w stage...

I'm sorry I can't be more help - I would be doing my nut with them by now... Maybe it's time to send a mate round with a baseball bat... I hope it all gets sorted for you.

(hoping not to give away too many identifying details) The current publishing company is running several magazines that were initially owned by a different publishing company (and another one before that) - with broadly the same editorial teams ie my assorted pals. Every company that has run these mags has been awful WRT paying freelances and I have a suspicion that it's the same management hiding behind 'new' companies: the mags get sold on as a 'going concern' while the publishers go bust...

Oh. We work in slightly different fields, so don't worry you haven't outed yourself Hope you get it sorted.

what percentage of your current income is from work through them?

i've worked for publications as a freelancer but not in the same capacity. one of the best known papers in UK argued back and forth over a fiver once, then used my work for a cover without paying me for it.

i think if you know they're like this and decide to take on work through them, you can't rely on that money as vital income. i understand that all jobs as a freelancer are pretty unreliable, payment-wise, but some clients are better than others. your energy would be better served generating new clients, some of which might actually pay you on time.

also- do you know any of the other freelance writers working for them?

Can you threaten to go legal with them?

Can you pretend to be the 'accounts dept' of your company and fax them a copy of a CCJ filled in with their details. Then a follow up phone call - saying - my boss says I have to submit this to the courts on Monday - can we avoid it??

My boss used this a lot and it worked.

What you don't want tohappen is that they are quietly going bust/being bought over and then you can kiss your money goodbye.

I think its too late to play nicely with them anymore,

Still no payment. They said last week that they would be 'sorting it out; last thursday ie sending payments via BACS, of course with the Easter holiday there was no hope of anything before yesterday/today.
I am back to leaving voicemail messages for them: of course no one ever returns calls. I am going to go to the office in person tomorrow and if there is no cheque to collect I am going to hand-deliver a letter stating my intention to start legal action.

do it.

Update: BASTARDS BASTARDS BASTARDS. They have paid me 2/3 or what they owe and told the editors they are not allowed to commission any more work from me so I have basically been sacked for asking to be paid.

Blimey - they've f*cked you right over. It's about time you returned the favour imo. If they still owe you more than £750 (including interest if you've asked for it) then send them a final letter and follow it up with a statutory demand 7 days later. If they fail to pay up you can force the compnay into liquidation or at least begin the process which will give them all sorts of problems.

Sadly they don't owe me more than £750 any more... I am trying to hang on to the thought that they are doing this to other people as well and at least I have got most of the money because I cannot see them surviving much longer.

They obviously paid you just enough to stop you going down that route. Barstewards. You can still bring an ordinary court claim for the rest but would I completely understand if you don't want to.