Steve Jorgensen <no****@nospam. nospam> wrote in
news:7l******** *************** *********@4ax.c om:
For my independent consulting, my terms are Net 10 unless the
client asks for Net 15, ain which case, I say OK. If they say
Net 30, I say thanks, I hope you find someone to do the work for you.
Regarding Consulting services, I've never had to wait more than 2
weeks from the date I submit the timesheet to get my payment, and
I wouldn't take kindly to it if I did.
You are bloody lucky, Steve. I have never at any point in my
consulting (I started in 1994) had that kind of ability to enforce
my terms with are DUE UPON RECEIPT. Some of my clients pay me
onsite
when I finish the work and I invoice them when I get home -- those
clients I *really* like.
But my best direct corporate clients never do better than about NET
20, because they do check runs every two weeks, and if my invoice
misses the current check run, I have to wait more than 2 weeks for
the payment.
My sub-contracted work is running 60 days *when *'m lucky*. The
problem is that the clients don't pay less than 30 days, so that
adds at least 2 weeks to the processing time, so 45 days is the
best
I can expect. But mostly it takes much longer than that.
This was not always the case. It has only become this way over the
last 2 or 3 years, when the real slowdown hit my business.
In my early years of consulting, the contracting companies I worked
for were bigger and just paid me whenever I asked for a check,
except for very large projects (over $5K or so), where they didn't
pay me until the client had paid.
But now I'm sub-contracting for only one small copmany, two
brothers
who are really great guys and are barely keeping afloat (in no
small
part thanks to their profits off *my* work, which run about $35 for
ever hour I work), and they can't pay me for anyuthing but small
projects before they've received payment from their clients. And
they are at the mercy of those clients, unfortunately, some of
which
(like a certain school district in New Jersey) pay at 90 days if
you're lucky.
I wish I could get rid of all the sub-contracted work, becuase I'd
be able to impose payment discipline, since no pay = no new work.
But these days I feel lucky to get any work at all.
I'm glad you've got the luxury of enforcing terms so favorable to
yourself. I've *never* averaged NET 10, ever. At one point, I was
averagin in the low 20s, but that was years and years ago, and was
that low only because a significant number of my clients were
paying
me onsite, before I'd even generated the invoice.
--
David W. Fenton
http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net
http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc