You get a service, you get a service, and you get a service, now show me the money!!!
Money (and a lot of coffee!) makes the creative business world go round. You need to make money, preferably a lot of it, to really keep your creative thoughts flowing. We're not here to tell you how much you should be making, that's up to your bottom-line to decide. What we can help with is some tips on how to get those invoices paid, and keep the doors open.
You have the creative talent, you've delivered excellent customer service, and you hopefully have a contract that stipulates clear transactional terms. Now for the important part, the part that means you can actually pay your staff next month, it's time to collect payment. For some clients this is a straight forward process, you send an invoice and they promptly pay. While for others this seems to become a complicated, awkward, time-consuming, empty promise pitfall. This is the huge downside of business and it has to be managed effectively so that it doesn't take your creative soul.
Invoicing is a chore and probably not your favourite thing. So let's look at how we can try and take this process from painful to profitable.
Clients paying late, and not paying at all is a widespread problem. In June 2019 the report from Xero Small Business Insights Paying the price, the economic impact of big businesses paying Australian small businesses late, highlighted some concerning issues:
This results in SMBs experiencing slower revenue growth and in turn causes a flow on effect with late payments to their supplies.
I'm sure you've had people say to you that clients can't expect to get your creative genius for free, you're not running a charity. The reality is even charities need money to operate. You have bills to pay and so the simple fact is you need your invoices paid on time, every time. At the very least most of the time. Use this checklist to help get your invoices paid and keep your creative doors open.