No payment terms

[contractor0110]

Hi,
In the contract sent by agency it was mentioned as no payment will be made if the time sheet is not authorized by the client.

Can you please advise whether I can ask the agency to amend the terms .I think agency will not make change to the contract and in case if client failed to authorize the time sheet is there a provision to get the payment legally?

Regards,

[NotAllThere]

Yes. You can ask the ageny to amend the terms.

If you've not signed it yet, you can make it a negotiating point. Your leverage is that you won't take the contract if this is not addressed.

If you have signed it, then, yes, you can ask. And they'll say "no". They have no reason to do otherwise.

Come renewal, you can ask them again, and if they so no, you're leverage is to not take the renewal. (So they lose the commission they get from you and have to do some work to find a replacement, with no certainty that a rival agency won't get someone else in, plus it might tarnish their reputation with the client).

Are you opted in?

[MrButton]

^ what he said.

But this is a fairly common clause. They will also usually say if they don’t get paid then you don’t get paid.

[Hobosapien]

I'd expect requiring authorised timesheets as proof of billable work is common otherwise there would be chancers submitting timesheets fraudulently, particularly last one of the contract, if the agency were mug enough to pay up without checking legitimate.

Depends on the type of work but I've never had a contract where I expected to get paid for invoices not backed up by a signed off timesheet.

As for some agencies only paying when they get paid from client, that circumvents one of the only genuine advantages of contracting via an agency, where they tend to pay your invoices before they get paid from the client if for example you invoice them weekly/fortnightly and client pays monthly, even if invoicing monthly some clients have much longer payment terms (60/90 days). I think that clause is in case the client has cashflow issues so agency can stop paying to reduce their exposure even if client is still signing off timesheets.

[Paddy]

Hi,
In the contract sent by agency it was mentioned as no payment will be made if the time sheet is not authorized by the client.

Can you please advise whether I can ask the agency to amend the terms .I think agency will not make change to the contract and in case if client failed to authorize the time sheet is there a provision to get the payment legally?

Regards,

Not enforceable under law of contract and not enforceable under common law.
You do the work, they must pay up,

I had one smart arse agent who tried this and they had to pay £2k is costs and damages to my Ltd Co.

[contractor0110]

Many thanks for all your advise.

[contractor0110]

Yes. You can ask the ageny to amend the terms.

If you've not signed it yet, you can make it a negotiating point. Your leverage is that you won't take the contract if this is not addressed.

If you have signed it, then, yes, you can ask. And they'll say "no". They have no reason to do otherwise.

Come renewal, you can ask them again, and if they so no, you're leverage is to not take the renewal. (So they lose the commission they get from you and have to do some work to find a replacement, with no certainty that a rival agency won't get someone else in, plus it might tarnish their reputation with the client).

Are you opted in?

Thanks for your reply.
I have opted out.