How to get the full sum of the contract?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8034546

by Apane • 12 years ago

6 4 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So, I have a contract in place for a 'x' amount of dollars. It's a 3 month deal, and I'm nearing the end of the third month (end of July), however, the issue is that development is nearly done as I've spent a lot of time on this project but I still have 3 payments due/3 milestones.

How do I get these 3 payments even though the project is nearly complete? Do I drag things out a bit more? I'm not quite sure how as most of the tasks are done, but I can try to think of ways..

Any other ideas? It's not that I'm taking advantage it's that I just crammed too much work in the first 2 months instead of spreading it out, so it's only fair that I get these 3 payments.

Any tips or ideas would be super helpful here!

Cheers!

yadad• 12 years ago

Depends on what your contract says.

Apane• 12 years ago

Care to expand on this? Thanks!

patio11• 12 years ago

Apologies in advance for asking very basic questions:

1) Have you invoiced your client for the two milestones which you have, presumably, delivered? If not, you should probably invoice your clients for these. You should note that (approximately) no client anywhere will pay you prior to you invoicing them.

2) Assuming you have actually invoiced that work, are those invoices due yet? For example, if your invoices are Net 30, it is quite likely that your client does not perceive at least one as being due yet. You should note that it is not outside the ordinary to find that Net 30 term get fudged a bit by clients.

3) You believe you have a contract in place for $X over 3 months. Read your contract carefully. What, specifically, are they paying you for? The deliverables or the time you spent? If you are charging them for your time, you have neither legal nor moral right to the $X estimate in spite of delivering the project faster than you anticipated. If you are charging for deliverables, it should be fairly straightforward to collect 100% of the contracted fee regardless of whether you deliver early.

4) Have you received any indication of bozo-ness from this client? My read of your post is that you're worried of non-payment. What in particular has caused this? Why do you believe you have to "drag things out" to get payment?

kromodor• 12 years ago

This!

also, we've had clients who wanted to know the payments so they can budget accordingly i.e. send them the invoices, but they might not be prepared to pay all 3 of them at once.

How to get the full sum of the contract?

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