Im a freelance and my cashflow is suffering because of a repeated late payer – what can I do?
Ask politely for what is rightfully yours, and insist if you are still fobbed off. Late payment is the bane of freelance lives, and most successful hacks have to learn to live with it. It does become easier with time, as is frequently observed. Provided you are in regular work the pipeline of work & money should be always full, so it doesn’t really matter how long the time lapse is between delivery of work and payment. That, however, does not always help. The following advice might: Contact the accounts department to find out what the hold-up is. You may well get more sense from them than from the editor who commissioned you, whose grasp of financial systems and in-house procedures may be less than perfect. Ask what you can do to streamline the process – are your invoices in the right format with all the numbers in place?, is there someone whose signature they need?, and so on. If things do not improve you may want to make mention of the legislation which protects your rights. Since 19
