Invoice weekly incase agency goes bust?

[richy]

Normally I invoice 4 worksheets as a single invoice once per month. Got thinking today I'd loose a lot of £ if agency went bust meanwhile.. (Progressive).

Do people on here wait similar time to invoice in batches? or invoice for each week?

Cheers, richy

[VectraMan]

Loose a lot of pounds? How do you loose pounds? Loose isn't even a verb.

I've always invoiced weekly, except when I went direct and then ended up not being paid for some of it as the client went bust. But it depends whether the agency will pay you weekly, and what their payment terms are. Mine pay after a week, which means my maximum exposure is 2 weeks - and that'd be insured courtesy of PCG Plus.

[Rody]

I've always invoiced monthly and always thought this was pretty standard practice.

I should think progressive are reasonably safe, but I guess these days you never know. The working capital requirement for a agency should be pretty stable and I would think there's not too much to go wrong as long as the client pays up.

[sweetandsour]

Normally I invoice 4 worksheets as a single invoice once per month. Got thinking today I'd loose a lot of £ if agency went bust meanwhile.. (Progressive).

Do people on here wait similar time to invoice in batches? or invoice for each week?

Cheers, richy

Normally these terms are dictated by the contract between your company and the agency - what does the contract say?

The best thing for your business is to invoice as frequently as you can - it's all about cash-flow and minimising your risks.

I've always invoiced monthly and always thought this was pretty standard practice.

I should think progressive are reasonably safe, but I guess these days you never know. The working capital requirement for a agency should be pretty stable and I would think there's not too much to go wrong as long as the client pays up.

Lots of things can go wrong including, but not limited to:

• Clients take much longer to pay the agency than the agency take to pay you
• Agencies have overheads and in this climate will be taking less money in to cover them
• The directors of the agency may have been lavishing the agency's cash on themselves
• The price of hairgel keeps going up

PCGPlus membership does provide some level of insurance against this happening - have you looked into whether you think it is worth it?

[Fred Bloggs]

Currently invoicing 2 weekly. But the current agency has been around since the 1950's so it's pretty low risk, I hope. Usually I invoice every week.

[richy]

Normally these terms are dictated by the contract between your company and the agency - what does the contract say?

I can invoice weekly. its the online-timesheet service Progressive, Huxley and others use. Then I get paid within 14 days in biz account.

The best thing for your business is to invoice as frequently as you can - it's all about cash-flow and minimising your risks.

Ok, I'll switch back to doing invoices per week.

Hmm PCG Plus, it could be worth it. I'm with QDos now though, so it would be a switch, and i've only just renewed my similar QDos products for another year (they dont have agency protection). i think i'm more likely to loose out on my other client i'm direct with, that contract limits me to 4 week invoice period though. PCG Plus doesn't seem to include going direct defaulters though.

Thanks for all the replies. Richy

[BolshieBastard]

Yep, invoice weekly if you can. Not all agents will agree to this though.

[chris79]

Can I just point out that it's 'lose', and not 'loose'...

lose money, loose trousers, etc.

[NotAllThere]

Progressive are extremely unlikely to go under. They've been around for years, have a huge client base and huge margins.

Having said that, there are many other reasons why I would never ever ever work through them.

[NickFitz]

I'd invoice daily given the chance - even better if they hand it over in ready money as I leave the building

But it varies from agency to agency; if they allow weekly invoicing, then the invoice goes in every week.

The other year I got a bit slack about this and submitted a month's worth of weekly invoices that I hadn't got around to doing, all in one go. When they hit the client, I got a pretty pissed-off phone call from the manager (I was home-based at that point) because he'd failed to notice, in sorting out his departmental budget, that the weekly payments hadn't gone out.

As a result he was suddenly presented with a bill from the agency that completely screwed up his figures. That could be said to be his fault, but it also reminded him of just how much I was getting paid, which had been based on my working away at the start of the gig. He then argued that I should accept a rate cut because I no longer had to travel and pay for hotels and suchlike

Moral: get the invoice in as soon as you possibly can. Until you bill, it's still their money. Make it yours.