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by jeromeparadis
4957 days ago
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What he said... That's what I've been doing since the 90s. It works well. And, to answer the question what steps to do when they don't pay: not much you can do other than asking. There aren't any worthwhile legal resources for businesses or freelancers to be paid. However, to not get there, make sure the payment schedule covers your work hours including profit and if they don't respect the schedule, stop working and mention there will be a delay in delivery. As he said, choosing well your client by avoiding people who are too difficult from the start usually avoids the worst kind of clients. As soon as your guts sees a red flag, don't ignore it and walk away. Your instinct is rarely wrong when sizing trustworthiness. |
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Due to the laws regarding unauthorized access to computer systems, it may not be legal for you to remove or even communicate with your software once it has been deployed to the client. For internal systems it might not even be physically possible.
To combat this, I like to incorporate a "dead man's switch". This means that the software will stop working within a certain amount of time (say 30 days), unless I actively intervene. The switch is only disabled once final payment has been received.
A notice somewhere on the site or in the app will say "Evaluation software - nn days remaining", so the client is aware and gets a countdown.
The switch doesn't have to be super sophisticated but it should incorporate some element of encryption - that way if the client attempts to circumvent it you can threaten them with a DMCA claim.