I signed a client in mid-May; they wanted their site completed by July 1. They asked us to double the price to ensure we got things done quickly. They made their down payment and were to have all their deliverables to us by mid-June. Our contract stated that payment in full (remaining balance) was due on July 1, whether the site was done or not, stipulating that if it wasn’t done it’d be because of them not giving us content.
June 17th we were told that we would have to create the content ourselves. No big deal, we told them, we’ll do it but the deadline was out the window. However, on July 1, we did not insist on payment. In an effort to provide customer service, we let it go.
Here comes scope creep, etc. “Make this font a tad bit larger.” “Make this picture a little smaller.” Etc. Etc. These “little edits” go on ad nauseum.
We completed the site to spec (even when the specs changed). All the additional changes have been added to the bill. They don’t have a problem with the bill, but they’re still submitting changes. And additional changes simply are not possible without us receiving payment.
So I’m looking for a little advice and/or prior experience with such a situation. Thanks.
At this point, it’s probably a lesson learned from your perspective to have ‘maintainance’ contract. It sounds like that part has been left out. If I were you, I would sent an e-mail w/ honest business situations. Start by saying stuff like, ‘Thanks for giving us the contract and glad to provide you with the site you wanted. Typically, once project is done we close out the contract and move onto our other clients. However, we understand that changes are needed time to time and we do provide maintainance that includes XYZ changes per year at $XYZ. To provide you with great services, our company needs necessary funding to ensure your satisfaction.’. Something like that… the idea is not to write ‘I want money or no work’. Write it the other way ‘We like to provide you with great service but we need funding’. Good luck!
The thing is, the contract is still not closed. We have several maintenance contracts, but we can’t get them to the point of “maintenance.” The nitpicking will carry on until Christmas! I appreciate your verbage, sg707 - I need a tactful way of saying that we’ve completed our obligations under the contract and need payment.
Gotcha. In that case, it sounds like you need to draw a hardline to end the contract. Something like, I’ll fix the following changes but additional will require maintainance contract. Still, make it ‘positive’ sell for maintainance. Something like, ‘Over 80% of our clients signed up with maintainance contract and here’s the service provide …x, y, z’. What’s important is not ‘What YOU want’, it’s’What CUSTOMER want’. If you can make the customer to WANT the maintainance then it’s a win-win situation. I’m sure you can come w/ a classy way to solve this issue.
It’s probably too late for this project, but it is very useful to have a clause in your original contract that sets a limit to the number of ‘minor changes’ allowed once a website is done according to the original specs. And state that once that limit has been reached, the final payment is due and any further changes will be billed at a rate of $xx per hour.
Is that in your original contract? You should really close the original contract down as soon as the website is completed, and after that allow the 4 - 8 hours per month for minor changes on an hourly rate, or you will never have the website contract finished.
it IS in our contract - we were just a little lax in enforcing payment when it was due. Their final bill is quite a bit higher now, however, because of the terms in the contract.
Again, the problem here is that it seems the site will never be “complete” in their opinion - something is always “not quite right” and we were too nice about that.
If payment is due, it is reasonable to pause work until the outstanding balance is paid. I would adopt a gentle reminder to the client before progressing to an outright work stoppage. If the client already approved the designs, completion should be based on the approved design. At this point, you should only be working on bugs or mistakes from the approved designs. Issues such as “Make this font a tad bit larger.” or “Make this picture a little smaller.” are change requests, not bug fixes or critical issues that prevent the website from working.