A knock in confidence

I've been a bit quiet of late (for those who know me personally that is very rare!).

I've been very busy with quite a lot of work coming in - great.

However a couple of weeks ago I had to make a difficult decision with a job I'd agreed to take on - I sent it back, unfinished. I've never done that before - I've always ensured that I've done a complete and satisfactory job, though it may have been a little late. Unfortunately it had got the the stage that I'd worked double the hours I'd allocated to it, it was already a week late but I was less than halfway through the final edit. I was staying up all hours to make progress on it and had other clients work backing up. The final decision was to risk losing this one client to save losing up to 3 others. A difficult decision but it was the right one at the time.

I've already had repeat business from the other clients but I must say it has knocked my confidence a bit - mainly because it was taking me so long to complete the project and I like to take pride in my work.

How do you deal with it when your confidence is knocked?

Know your Market

Just about to pack up for a weekend at the in-laws when an odd message popped up in my inbox.

The subject had 'Hello Dear Dougalfish from XXXX Press'

I vaguely remembered sending out a lot of CVs to different publishing companys not so long ago and wondered if one had found my CV on a to-do pile and fallen instantly in love :-)

Then I noted the email was addressed to the email I use on my directory entries - so concluded that it was probably work and ignored my initial worry that it might be luncheon meat.

Dear Dougalfish,

Hope you are doing fine.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sxxxxxx and I am responsible for business development at _____________ (www.______________.com ) . I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our company ........

It turns out that THEY are a company based in India that want to sell ME editing services!

..... In order to help you assess our capabilities, we would be happy to doing a sample of 10 – 15 pages for you as per your specifications. I have attached PDF of our brochure for your kind perusal.

We would request for a convenient time sometime this week or any time convenient to you for a teleconference so that we can explain our services and take our discussion to next level.

Look forward to your response.

I looks like they've trawled the Directory of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders for email addresses - what a waste of their time! Perhaps I should reply with my fees.

Very quick update

Quick update on my last post - payment will arrive in my bank account tonight (3 weeks late) which will include the interest but not the compensation fee. (I've amended my invoices to actually state an amount in the text I put at the bottom - for an invoice of under £1,000 this will be £40, more for over £1,000.)

I haven't lost business as a result as they've been in touch twice this week about upcoming projects - one I can't do as I'm too busy to even blog at the moment.

Right, back to the grindstone (laptop) ...

Late Payment Charges

(Image from freeimages.co.uk)

The time has come to get serious with one of my clients. For the second week running I've received an email asking me to be understanding as they can't pay my invoice due to 'insufficient funds' (a phrase I'm about to hear from my bank).

The invoice isn't for a great deal but 6 weeks ago when I completed the job and raised the invoice I'd been working long hours to get the project finished within a tight time frame (I had to turn it around in 5 days).

At a colleague's advice I added the following to the bottom of my invoices about 18 months ago:

Payment within 30 days please.
I reserve the right to claim statutory interest at 8% above the Bank of England Base Rate from the date the debt becomes overdue in accordance with the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 and to claim an additional sum for pursuing the debt as provided for by the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Regulations 2002.

Usually referring to this is enough to ensure that timely payment is made but not in this case so I'm having to follow through for the first time.

There are detailed instructions on how to calculate the interest bit here. At the moment it is 13% of the amount owed, divided by 365 days, multiplied by the number of days overdue - which doesn't look like much really.

But I can also claim compensation arising out of late payment £40 (more is due if the original invoice is over £1000). Which should just about cover any charges by my bank due to insufficient funds.

I will let you know how I get on with this client - they are usually quite good and at least they have let me know the situation rather than hoping I don't notice.



I'm assuming there is similar legislation in other parts of the world - do you find that small businesses or sole proprietors tend to be taken advantage of by larger companies in this way?