In the case of 'no pay until complete', the situation has arisen in the past where the concept of 'complete' was at issue. We worked it out well, and both of us got good on the deal, but hopefully mentioning this will work as a word of caution...
Clients don't always know the 'ins and outs' of our business, so their terminology tends to differ. (I recently have had the same functionality called different things in a meeting - modal window, ajax exploder, grayedout popup window..., just as an example). The differences between 'not complete' and 'additional functionality' is an area where some customers don't see the difference. Part of our jobs with customers like this is not only to protect ourselves with policies that make sense, is also to help educate the client. I have worked with people who require a portion up front before getting started, sometimes with 'milestones' for the next portion of the money. I have worked with people who start on a hand-shake. I have worked with people who invoice periodically (like I do). The most important thing is to do things in a way that makes you feel fiscally protected and the client understands/accepts. If you do things on a 'special' basis to win a client over, make sure that the 'special' method is an introductory thing and that in the future they will adhere to your current methodology. Be careful. As there are many supposed programmers out there that will take a client's money and never produce any results, there are many client's out there that will take your productivity and refuse to pay you for your work, sending you to a lawyer to recover your fees. Stay tuned for my next rant, 'Make it a practice to develop on your own servers....' William -----Original Message----- From: Chad Gray [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 1:06 PM To: cf-talk Subject: RE: billing Thanks for all the feedback. The original site was a $20k project in 2002. Now this redesign which is more complex is hitting the $40k range. I went back and looked closer at all the billing we have done in the past ( I was not in charge at that time of billing ) and I feel this new price is legitimate for the amount of labor we have in it. For these projects in the future I will be doing weekly billing... I have always liked to tell the customer that we wont bill them until the project is complete and they are absolutely happy with the result according to the quote we provide. I kind of got in that mindset and did not want to charge them until the project was done. Thanks! Learned my lesson. > -----Original Message----- > From: Al Musella, DPM [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 3:49 PM > To: cf-talk > Subject: Re: billing > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:322163 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
