Do you really want to pay 50% up front for your project, before you’ve even had a chance to build a rapport with your developer? Is it a pain to get upper management to approve that big down payment? Or are you having trouble tracking & budgeting for various hourly invoices? You’re a good client, of course, but do you want your consultant wasting his time trying to collect fees from other less reputable clients?
Maybe the developer you hired turned out to be a hack. Or your dev just doesn’t seem to have enough time for you. Or they don’t communicate with you as much as you’d like. Whatever the reason, now you’re wondering how you can salvage some of that hefty down payment or if you just have to try to make the most of the situation. It may seem a little scary at first, but up front weekly billing can help you avoid these situations. See the benefits below, or read about weekly billing from a developer’s perspective.
Why you should want to be charged weekly as a client
Easy on your budget
Weekly payments are easy to budget. You know exactly how much you’ll need to pay each week. A lot of managers can even just use their discretionary fund to pay for development, rather than having to get a 50% down payment approved by upper management. If you’re a small business, you can easily make payments with your credit card, and not worry about a large upfront payment putting your business at risk by becoming cash poor.
Limit your risk
By paying weekly, you can limit the risk of getting stuck with a bad developer. If you aren’t satisfied with the past week’s worth of work, you are free to stop paying and find a new developer. No need to feel like you’re committed to a slow developer. No need to worry about how to get the most out of your down payment or even trying to recoup some of it in court. At worst, you’re out just a week’s worth of money, and that’s it.
Know your developer is focused on your project
By paying your developer for a week’s worth of work in advance, you can be secure in the knowledge that your developer is focused on your project. You don’t really want them working on your project for a couple hours here and there among the other projects on their plate. That just slows the development down and decreases the quality, because of all the context switching they’re going through, bouncing from project to project.
You’ll also get the added benefit of having a faster and more motivated developer. If you’re paying hourly invoices, the slower your dev works, the more money they’ll receive. Is that right? Your developer should be an expert professional. If they know you trust them to provide value, they’ll be encouraged to work as efficiently as possible, because procrastinating won’t make them any more money. There’s also the push to deliver value every single week, because they know you could choose to just end the engagement at any time.
Why waste your time arguing over what’s in scope
Paying weekly means you don’t have to constantly check the original scope document to see if you can request this or that little change. Let’s face it, that scope document is usually out of date within a week of signing it. You won’t have to waste time on addendums to the original contract, because you can just as for the change, knowing that you’ve already paid for this week’s work.
Conclusion
Now, weekly billing doesn’t sound so scary does it? If you give it a chance, I bet you’ll even prefer it. If your developer isn’t charging weekly, maybe you should ask them why not? You could send them a link to the advantages of weekly billing for consultants.
