Accepting Payment from Clients

Since leaving my day job last August, I’ve become a very diligent Freelancer. I’ve setup a standard Invoice format. Started reading more articles and books on running a business than on developing. Printed official business cards, the works. I even started accepting electronic payments from clients via PayPal instead of waiting for the printed checks to arrive in the mail then needing to fill out the deposit slip for the bank. Yes, life is pretty good as a work from home freelancer. At least things were all well until I read the latest article from Freelance Switch.

This is one of those little articles that sends shivers down your spine. The article goes into some detail about assets requested by the client and the feeling from the Freelancer that assets were not part of the original deal. The client, being the creative twat that only clients can be, decided to reverse the charges on the credit cars. This is the really scary part. The reversal takes almost less time to come through PayPal that the original payment. That my friends real gets me where I live at the moment. Granted the article only paints on side of the picture. But really it’s all I need. The fact that no questions were ask by the client’s credit card company nor PayPal is quite disturbing

Other than switching back to cold hard printed checks I’m researching the alternate of in between solution that will at least offer me some protection. The thing is I know this will happen. Anyone who deals with clients no matter what the business is bound to come across one of those evil clients that knows the game. Thanks for the wake up Cara

About Paul Menard

Mis-placed Texas Geek now living on North Carolina. Lover of all things coding especially WordPress, Node.js, Objective-C and Swift. Love to work on interesting projects and come away with some new knowledge. Trying to keep my head on while I try to staying abreast of all the latest technologies. Lover of books and cats.