[consulting] Proper Collections Procedure

[Trevor Twining]

Hello everyone, first time poster, lurking for a while.

I've had to do this a few times too, and I've found a few things that 
have helped.

One way to get the money out of them and maintain good relations is to 
propose you take the outstanding amount (possibly negotiating it down), 
and because it's in dispute the two organizations donate it to a charity 
of their choosing. The company actually pays the money out, and the two 
of you get the joint publicity of presenting a cheque to an org, plus 
you've turned something negative into something positive.

For all my clients I charge deployment separately from development. I 
don't release any code until the development project is completely 
signed off and paid for. Then I charge a nominal fee for deployment on 
outside servers. That way I maintain control over the product until I am 
compensated, and if they stiff me on deployment, I'm not out for the 
entire project.

Hope this helps.

Michael Haggerty wrote:
> I have a question for other members of this list about how they handle
> collections.
>
> I have a complicated matter with a client and their delinquent invoices.
> They are refusing to make payment on fairly large bill after they have
> received a lot of custom code and already launched the site on their own
> servers. The justification they cite is cost overruns in the development
> process, most of which were for features not included in the original spec
> but which they themselves requested. The overruns were within 15% of the
> total project price.
>
> I have tried dealing with them reasonably for several weeks and received
> multiple payment promises that were broken. The bill is now quite a bit
> overdue and it's taking a huge amount of time dealing with all the craziness
> around their tab (they keep requesting further clarification about things
> that were done months ago and it's eating up my team's time). They are
> dealing with other Drupal shops at this point and there is no way for me to
> cut off services. What really burns me is the site was for a third party who
> has already paid them and the cost of development was less than 1/8 of what
> the third party paid.
>
> Anyone have any ideas? 
>
> M
>
>
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Trevor Twining
Internet Programmer
http://www.trevortwining.info
email.me at trevortwining.info