What to do if the customer delays payment?

Question

Freelance

Hello.
I have such a situation, I worked on one project with a company and there the project manager was adequate, set interim payments for work, and so on.
Payments were delayed but for a week and a half, no more.

Then he quit due to salary delays, but I continued to work with the company.
I was thrown a lot of different small tasks, but there is one major one in terms of layout of the site.
I started working on their server and there were no prerequisites for something bad.
But now I have not received payment for small tasks and I am afraid that they will pull with a big one.
Moreover, they didn’t make intermediate payments here, but they send corrections to the task, more precisely, there are no improvements in the layouts.
And they promise only to deliver in payment after I do it. It's okay, I'm ready to make them.
But how to organize insurance for myself, I thought to load styles and scripts from my service, so as not to give them away until they pay. But you can still copy from them.
I did not download the site assembly, but they have a minified style file and scripts.
Tell me what to do??

I'm tired of being constantly fed with breakfast, that there will be payments, in 2 weeks it repeats again. In general, I'm at a crossroads, since I can't pick up the project, otherwise they won't pay anything at all.

Who faced? What do you recommend?

Answer 1

Firstly, do you have written obligations - yours and the customer's?
In a contract?
If not, then you need to fix - the volume, the timing of the fulfillment of your obligations, the timing of payment, broken down by stages. Very clearly. And certify with signatures, seals. It is advisable if someone signs by proxy, get a copy of this very power of attorney. Notarial.
And no facsimile signatures! Do not sign with a helium pen either.
It is desirable that you have documents signed by the client on acceptance of individual volumes of your work. More precisely, it is absolutely necessary - to fix the very fact (or facts) of your performance of each task.
Otherwise, even if there is a contract, it will be difficult to prove the performance of the work and its acceptance.
Read the contract carefully, very carefully. On the subject of a dirty trick and all sorts of pitfalls, not in your favor.
Secondly, you need to clearly build a task structure for yourself.
As I understand it, you have completed small tasks. Is there a document on their implementation and acceptance?
If not, it needs to be filed. Here you will see a lot about the customer.
Next, there is a big challenge. Is it broken down into steps? How will acceptance take place and when?
This is also in the terms of the contract. Same as payment terms.
And the third - additions. These are separate tasks that should also be fixed. As additional agreements to the main contract.
This is all the minimum foundation for your protection.
Usually, in practice, the court takes the side of the employee.
But without all the described documents, you are extremely vulnerable to the customer.
But these excuses - someday tomorrow ... Very alarming.

Answer 2

No money - no work.
As there is the slightest delay, you need to immediately stop working until full payment.

Answer 3

I would have demolished everything from the server and then on an advance payment.
With assholes on assholes

Answer 4

the situation is simple there is no money there is no payment, that's all
, you don't have to think that the company has a lot of money there and they don't want to pay, usually everything is the other way around
well, they didn't pay, you take the job and wait

Answer 5

You need to write to clients that they have reached the limit of working hours that you provide on credit, and now work on the project is on hold until they pay off the debt (write in this official style). After that, you should not do any improvements, except for fixing bugs in the functionality that is at the acceptance stage. No new features.

Answer 6

Then he quit due to salary delays, but I continued to work with the company.

doing it as a
dirty trick is not an option, the consequences are not known, in addition to the general "image of morality"
you can stop working for them temporarily and look at the reaction