payment terms- 45 days versus 30?

[SussexSeagull]

I haven't had anything but monthly for about a decade.

[Paralytic]

I've had weekly payments from Search.

[NotAllThere]

Longest I've had was three weeks. Shortest was next day on receipt of invoice!

[jamesbrown]

I've had everything from near instantaneous payment (like, within a few hours of invoice received - small business obv.) to 90 days, the latter involving a couple of layers of subcontracting and, with that one, 10% of all invoices were withheld until all deliverables met - was a cool project, though. So, yeah, varies dramatically. Nothing unusual about 45 days, but perhaps they're leaking outwards with covid cashflow issues, dunno - haven't noticed it myself.

[cannon999]

Do you turn down a lot of contracts then? Weekly's the same as monthly if you have a warchest...

Imagine turning down paid work for some sense of regular cashflow... I know what I'd do

Never been an issue so far. Is a client really going to go with a different contractor because of payment terms? My skills are pretty niche so goodluck with that.

[ensignia]

I'd prefer to get paid monthly, but am with Hays at the moment who pay weekly.

[ladymuck]

In practise, on 45 day terms, you still receive a monthly payment, it's not 45 days between payments. Waiting for the first one to come in can feel painful if you've had a long gap. There's also the 'bonus' that you get paid long after the contract has ended, which can help smooth over any break in gigs or early hiccups with a new client.

[David71]

Morson and Hays are weekly.
Current project going direct via a framework - anything up to 7 weeks.
Current client hasn't set anyone up to approve my invoices so I have to wait for the frameworks 'auto-approval' after 3 weeks, then it's 4 weeks for the money to flow through to me. In theory, I could 'up' my invoice to anything I want rather than stick to my agreed milestone amounts!