30 Days

[Lucy]

Is 30 days from invoice a very long time to wait to be paid (infact it's more than that cause my umbrella takes a week), the agency I'm through admit it's 'unusual' but insist that's it. Their alternative was to leave !

In my previous contract the one man band paid within 14 days...

[Gonzo]

Its not great but I don't think that it is uncommon.

My current gig is 28 days after invoice. There's no umbrella involved though and the payments usually arrive a few days early.

[hyperD]

I thought one of the advantages of an agency was the rapidity of payment when a timesheet was submitted. When I went through agencies it was normally under 1 or 2 weeks.

You should try fixed price on B2B purchase order: on a good day I'm paid within 30 days on a milestone completion. The longest has been 6 months when the client outsourced their accounts to Bangalore. Needless to say, I believe it's coming back to the UK again. (sigh...)

[Ardesco]

I belive there is a standard somewhere that states that after 30 days you can start claiming interest on outstanding invoices. Some Agents take this to mean they can earn interest on your cash for 30 days.

Try and barter with them, but if you can survivie without the money for a while, (And if i remember correctly you were OK for another 3 months) I wouldn't worry about i. The positive is that 30 days after your gig finishes you get some money coming in which can be useful if you end up on the bench for a while.

[SallyAnne]

Thats quite a long time to wait like - but all agencies are different, so I guess you just hav to take it?

I went with Reeds once, and they were brilliant! Got paid weekly - filed invoice online on a monday and was paid on the Friday...ah them were the days!

[Lucy]

Thanks everyone.

Yes, sounds like I have to live with it.

The worst part of it was the twatty 'relationship manager' tried to tell me being paid any sooner would risk IR35. PLLLLLLease !

[boredsenseless]

I belive there is a standard somewhere that states that after 30 days you can start claiming interest on outstanding invoices. Some Agents take this to mean they can earn interest on your cash for 30 days.

Try and barter with them, but if you can survivie without the money for a while, (And if i remember correctly you were OK for another 3 months) I wouldn't worry about i. The positive is that 30 days after your gig finishes you get some money coming in which can be useful if you end up on the bench for a while.

You can but only if your terms and conditions don't override this.

For instance if you have a 60 day payment term you can't charge interest after 30 days.

anything a month and below is good for payment terms, anyone getting paid earlier than that should count their blessings. I've been doing this for five years now and never been paid earlier than 5 weeks from invoice and that was only because the payroll girl at my client was going on honeymoon so she cleared her backlog.

I usually get paid somewhere between 6 - 12 weeks after invoice. And I think that is okay.


Oh and your "twatty" relationship manager has a point, consistent fast turn around times are more in line with employee contracts than a B2B relationship where 60/90 day terms are more common

[Lucifer Box]

I'm not so sure, boredsenseless. We're talking about a contractor - umbrella - agent relationship here. I agree in contract direct b2b land, months is more usual but one of the functions of the agent is to act as a factor and if they aren't doing this, that is one major reason less to use them.

[tim123]

I agree with Lucifer. One of the major things that is responsible for the agency margin is the cost of invoice factoring (real or theoretical).

If they are not doing that factoring, then the margin should be correspondingly lower, which of course, it may be.

tim