Don’t upset your web developer.

Cash flow can be a real challenge for businesses. Smaller ones especially can find it very tough to get paid on time and bigger organisations can sometimes dominate the relationship.

After all, if for example you’re an individual freelancer and are negotiating with a large company for work you will find it tough to get short settlement terms. Also, if the big company is late in paying it’s very difficult for the smaller party to “force payment”. Going to court for payment of a relatively small amount of money isn’t cost effective as the legal fees would far outweigh the money owed.

Reddit user absando is a freelance web designer and recently posted a great illustration of how he dealt with things when a big company “forgot” to pay him.

He posted that ‘I used to do freelance translating work a few years ago and I finished a 1,200 word technical manual for an Indian client that had good reviews on their industry profile. Normally payment for freelance transitions can range between 30 to 60 days, and under my contract they had 60 days to pay the amount.’

Straight away we can see that absando has a tough time as 60 days isn’t a particularly short payment term.

Things got worse for him though.

He continued explaining ‘Fast forward to the 65th day since I delivered the project and I didn’t hear anything from them. After multiple phone calls, e-mails and Skype messages, I received no word from the client so I decided to give up, write a negative review and move on.’

Whilst a lot of people in that situation would have had to write off the debt, absando was lucky.

Six months later the same company got in touch with him and obviously forgot that they hadn’t paid him last time. This time the project was for some web design work and he played it really well as rather than ask for the money he was owed, he kept quiet about it and got on with the project.

In a stroke of genius though he completed the project on time but didn’t send it all in. Instead, he changed the lock screen to the fine piece of artwork shown above.

He continued: “Surely enough a couple of hours from the deadline the translation company was frantically trying to reach me, sending emails and even trying to call my American number. They were freaking out because the project was due for their client on the very same day, and if they didn’t get it they’d lose their business with them.

I gladly responded, saying: ‘Hey remember that freelancer you stood up 6 months ago, yeah that’s me. I have your project ready to go, but you need to pay me for my previous work PLUS interest.”

Needless to say the cash was deposited into his account within 30 minutes.

Nice work!