Poll: Do you work with clients who require you to accumulate invoices to a certain amount before payment?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
SITE STAFF
Feb 10, 2019

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you work with clients who require you to accumulate invoices to a certain amount before payment?".

This poll was originally submitted by Harry Hermawan. View the poll results »



 
Paulinho Fonseca
Paulinho Fonseca  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 02:04
Member (2011)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Yes and they have... Feb 10, 2019

paid me on time. It's been more than 7 years now working with this client that pays me on a 60-day basis.
XD


 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 05:04
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Yes Feb 10, 2019

I have one client who only has small marketing sentences to be translated into Portuguese and we have agreed a long time ago that I only invoice him when we reach a certain amount. Usually he pays the next day.

[Edited at 2019-02-10 10:04 GMT]


ValeriaR_Arg
 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 06:04
French to English
No Feb 10, 2019

And I'm pretty sure I'd tell them that I'd bill whatever they had cumulated by the end of the month.

I vaguely remember a client wanting to do that at the agency I used to work at, and all that happened was that there was a pending project hanging around for months. Not sure I'd like that.


 
Eckhard Boehle
Eckhard Boehle  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 06:04
English to German
+ ...
It depended also on the number of assignments Feb 10, 2019

I actually had a client in the US for whom I did a lot of work and who for reasons of loss due to currency conversion asked to wait for a certain amount to accumulate before transferring the money.
But that was not a real problem for me as they paid very fast and regularly.
Only as jobs became less in number because they lost their most important direct client, they also sent smaller invoice amounts.


 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 06:04
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Yes, but it depends Feb 10, 2019

I had one very nice client who sent a large job and paid at once. However, the next was small, and in the end I said I would do it for free, because the bank charges ate up practically all the fee. She ended up finding another translator, as accumulating jobs would not work for me - she really needed a specialist in subjects outside my scope, then there would be enough for a sensible payment arrangement.

I have dropped several other clients along the way, because their jobs were too
... See more
I had one very nice client who sent a large job and paid at once. However, the next was small, and in the end I said I would do it for free, because the bank charges ate up practically all the fee. She ended up finding another translator, as accumulating jobs would not work for me - she really needed a specialist in subjects outside my scope, then there would be enough for a sensible payment arrangement.

I have dropped several other clients along the way, because their jobs were too small and too infrequent, so I never knew when I was actually going to get paid. If I work for a client regularly, then I am happy to agree to accumulate jobs, especially when they are small.

I have had two very good clients whom I invoiced quarterly, unless they owed me more than 2000 Danish Kroner. I still work with one, and we always come over the DKK 2000 in a quarter. The other client used to pay bank charges as a separate item on the invoice, which worked very well for several years - I did lot of small jobs and a couple of larger ones on each invoice. With a streamlined routine and Trados templates, etc. we kept the overheads and hassle to a minimum, so that it was not too expensive for the end client!

I make out monthly invoices for most of my clients, often with several jobs on one invoice. I am not in the Eurozone and nor are many of my clients, and I do a lot of small jobs, so we do have to think about bank charges.
For clients in the UK or Denmark there are no costs for bank transfers, but there are charges for transfers from Sweden, Norway and the Eurozone.
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Mario Freitas
Mario Freitas  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 02:04
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Other Feb 10, 2019

1. I work with clients that require me to accumulate a certain period of time, usually a month, not a specific amount.

2. I accumulate jobs upon my choice, when the price of a job is too low to issue an invoice. For example, if a regular client sends me a small job (i.e. less than $50), I usually wait for more jobs to issue the invoice, as long as it doesn't take more than two months. After two months, I issue the invoice, whatever the total amount is.


 
EvaVer (X)
EvaVer (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:04
Czech to French
+ ...
I used to Feb 11, 2019

Not any more, but this requirement was not the reason for the discontinuation. I sometimes propose this myself to clients in case of very small jobs.
And my standard practice is monthly invoicing, of course.

[Edited at 2019-02-11 08:03 GMT]


 
Omri Ofek Luzon
Omri Ofek Luzon  Identity Verified
Israel
Local time: 08:04
Member (2019)
English to Hebrew
+ ...
Only if... Jul 18, 2019

It is a client I know for a long while and trust him/her.

 


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Poll: Do you work with clients who require you to accumulate invoices to a certain amount before payment?






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