Pro tip: I spent $300 on a contract template and it fixed my late payment problem | Chasing Invoices - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Pro tip: I spent $300 on a contract template and it fixed my late payment problem
I used to think paying for legal templates was a waste of money. I run a small design shop out of Portland and for years I just used a plain one-page agreement I found online. Then I had a customer in Seattle who owed me $4,200 and kept saying the work was not what he ordered, even though he approved every step. I hired a lawyer for one hour at $300 to look over my contract, and she showed me two sentences that were missing. One was a late fee clause, the other said payments were due on receipt instead of net 30. I changed those two lines and now I charge 2% per month on anything past 14 days. Since March I have collected $1,800 in late fees from three different customers, and nobody has argued about it once. Has anyone else had luck with a simple late fee clause, or do you go straight to collections?