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of interest on late payments and as a professional you are entitled to the same. Be sure to specify the amount on your invoice and the period from which interest starts accruing. This could be 7 days after the due date.

The list of points above allow you to help prevent late payments and non-payments, but what do you do when payments become overdue?

The first thing to do is not to panic. Adhere to your own specific invoicing terms and implement them when and if they occur. You can also send a polite reminder email to your client reminding them that their payment is now overdue and that interest will be applied after 7 days.

If you are using paypal you can set your account to automatically send reminders after a certain period of time.

If by thirty days you have not received your payment, it is time to get a little tougher. First of all re-send the invoice and state that it is now 30 days overdue and state the amount of additional interest that has accrued.

At this point it might also be a good idea if writing web content to check and see if your articles have been published online. Using Copyscape should help with this. What I would suggest doing is typing the title of the article into Copyscape or into Google and see what you come up with. If you find that your article has been published online you need to remind your client that what they have done is illegal. They do not own the copyright to these articles as they have not paid for them. You can then recommend that payment be made immediately or you will insist that the articles be removed.

I have to admit, that this has worked extremely well for me on both occasions that I have had to implement it. Once clients realise that you are not going to be fooled and that you know your copyright laws they do tend to make prompt payment.

There may of course be times where you will never receive payments, where clients don't respond to emails, or answer phone calls. When this happens it is really a personal choice as to what way to take things. You will always have the option of suing for your payment if this is the route you want to take.

A final word for all freelancers is to always request a deposit on any work you carry out. If this is not possible, then try to include stage payments in your assignment terms.

Learn more about this author, Amanda Evans.
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