[ClearAndPresent]

As a palette cleanser and loin girder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U (You already guessed it was Mike Monteiro.)

For this project:

Did they refuse to pay actively ("We won't pay you."), or passively (No replies to emails.) The latter might be incompetence.

As others mentioned, specific legal advice depends on respective jurisdictions, but an offical lawyer's letter sometimes wakes up legal when accounting is drifting.

Did you deliver the final access to the code / server / credentials? If not, gently bring servers, DBs, platforms to a halt pending final payments.

Future projects:

Contract, always.

Up-front commencement payments, always.

Price yourself higher in the initial quote, and ask for staged payments, such that by the time your delivery schedule is 50-75% done you are 100% paid.

You control the source code accounts, you control the server credentials, you control the database access credentials, you hand over final access after the final check has cleared.

[labcomputer]

> Price yourself higher in the initial quote, and ask for staged payments, such that by the time your delivery schedule is 50-75% done you are 100% paid.

Related to this, another technique I've seen used:

* Figure out whatever price you want to quote

* Add 25% to that.

* In the formal quote, show the 125% price and a 20% discount for timely payment of your invoices (however you define that in the contract, maybe 30 or 90 days).

* The final bottom line price is the original price from the first bullet point.

When the client "forgets" to pay, you draw their attention to the terms of the discount and that, without the discount, they will owe 25% more.

[opless]

Absolutely.

FU Pay me.

A polite email to the Finance director, or CEO ought to do the trick, and wait a week or two, warning them about the consequences of non-payment and interest on the debt.

Then after the time limit has passed pop down to your local court house to file a small claim or a winding up order if your client is local. You could also sell the debt to a third party. Then it's their problem.

[ocodo]

> warning them about the consequences of non-payment and interest on the debt.

You cannot simply add in these penalties though, not suggesting you are implying that.

However any such clauses / penalties need to be clearly laid out in the initial contract, and the contract also needs to be legally enforceable. Always check with the relevant jurisdiction what acceptable penalties are, and get a lawyer.

[opless]

It depends where you are. In the UK you can add interest to outstanding debt.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> As a palette cleanser and loin girder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

An absolute classic. Well worth the hour or so to watch.

[15155]

Every attorney adds the maximum-legally-accruable interest rate to every invoice they issue and retainer agreement they execute. You should too.

[ufmace]

It's a good video, but I think some people may miss the point.

You SHOULD be working with a good lawyer ahead of time. You should NOT be regularly suing your clients. Actually suing is expensive, time-consuming, and painful.

You should have a solid, enforceable contract set up ahead of time that you require new clients to sign, and get your lawyer involved if they want to change anything. The contract should ensure that you are within your rights to stop work and take away things they want if they aren't paying on time. If you do it right, you have a smooth and easy escalation path for non-payment, they're the ones who find themselves in a bad situation and have the option of either trying to sue you or just pay you the originally-agreed-upon amount.

I'm not a lawyer or your lawyer and don't even know what jurisdiction anyone is in, so don't do anything without consulting one. But the idea is something like, you only transfer control of servers and services to the customer upon being paid in full, no exceptions, and if they are behind on payment by some particular time and amount, you are explicitly within your rights to shut down services or block their access until such time as their account is paid up.

It's interesting how a good contract is kind of like a good program. The happy case is only like 20% of the work, the other 80% of the code or contract is all about detailing every possible way the happy case could go wrong and exactly what happens when each particular way of going wrong happens.