[consulting] being a listed consultant

[Evan Leibovitch]

Wire transfers are OK, but they're slow, expensive, and sometimes
extremely difficult to set up internationally (mainly on the sender's
side, depending on the particular country pair -- wires to China can be
particularly tricky). Not every bank, and relatively few community
financial institutions (ie, credit unions or sparkassen) are skilled in
sending international wires. Whichever side needs to do currency
exchange will usually get an unfavourable rate. Also, in the case that a
transfer doesn't go through (the sender doesn't have their money anymore
but the recipient doesn't have it either) -- which happens from time to
time -- tracing is very time-consuming. While this is all great for the
recipient, it can offload a lot of inconvenience and cost to the sender,
which should concern anyone who cares about customer service.

For direct currency transfers -- especially internationally -- credit
card transactions are by far fastest, most accurate, best on the
exchange rate, and easy for customers (so long as your invoices are less
than about $3K each). The transaction fees are also MUCH cheaper, though
the expense is borne by the recipient rather than the sender.  Let's not
forget that there are some perfectly acceptable ways to take credit card
payments using ecommerce or übercart, and there's no reason that you
couldn't use them for billing clients. Best of all, you don't need to go
anywhere near Paypal.

The biggest knock against credit card transactions is the need to do at
least some minimal volume for it to be worth the bother, for there are
monthly fees. New developments such as Google Cart may change this
model, but this is also the kind of thing that might suit, for instance,
a co-operative of cunsultants...

> Our experience is that the larger the organization you're working for, 
> the longer it takes to get paid.  Small businesses are very familiar 
> with the challenges posed when clients don't pay on time, and usually 
> respond to invoices very quickly (net15 or less).
Then again, smaller orgs are more-often understaffed or under cash-flow
crunches of their own, both of which are certainly common for NPOs which
-- as a category -- account for so much of Drupal's installed base.

My experience is that payment speed has less to do with the size of the
org (or the size of the bill) than with your distance from the person
who approves the payment. If your client contact isn't high enough in
the org's food chain, your invoices are more likely to get delayed
and/or second-guessed as part of the payables process. IOW, when you're
doing your client contact, try and make friends with the treasurer/
comptroller/ director as well as the IT people :-).

> I definitely recommending getting a purchase order from larger clients whenever possible, as invoices issued against a PO get processed much more quickly.
>   
Good advice, so long as either you're OK with fixed pricing or the
client can handle open-ended POs (many can't). Most larger orgs can't
issue you *any* payment without a PO, so if you don't make one a PO is
likely generated internally for you.

> As far as freelancers go, we always commit to pay them, even if the client does not pay us.
I think you're usually bound legally to do this whether you commit to it
or not. ;-)

- Evan