There are many stressful business decision to make in photography. One of the biggest is regarding payment. Should you be paid upfront, on the day, upon delivery, or should you invoice at 30,60, or 90 days?
Across the board in photography, we need to make sure that we are being paid both a fair sum of money for our skillset and value as well as making sure that we are paid in a prompt fashion. I am sure many of you across the globe can relate to chasing payment from invoices well past the 60-day mark or maybe ending up never delivering files because the client hasn’t paid.
I have certainly fallen foul to all of these, which is why I now work with the billing system that I have and adapt it for smaller clients who may have less money in the bank or are an unknown quantity.
In this video, I look at the three main ways of billing for photography work, and I discuss the pros and cons of all of these as well as in which scenarios they would be applicable. One of the biggest reasons that photographers go under is because of cash flow. I have seen several friends lose their job because they had too many bills come in before anyone had paid their well overdue invoices.
In spite of this and although my cash flow is far better, I still suffer from the occasional client who has taken obscene amounts of time to pay their bills, and sadly, this is usually the far larger clients rather than the independent businesses.
How do you manage payments in your photographic niche?