Ensuring payment from client
Use some form of escrow agent: Some freelancer sites provide payment escrow services (e.g. E-Lance). In this system the client puts money in escrow for the project in advance and then when they accept the project it forwards the payment to the provider. Progress Payments Arrange a progress payment approach with the client where they pay at certain milestones rather than a single payment at the end of the project. Ideally you would have them pre-pay for each milestone before you start work on it. However, you could ask for payment after each milestone, which might be easier to sell to your client. It does leave some risk, but minimizes that risk somewhat. "You should absolutely have a contract between you and your client stipulating the quid-pro-quos of the arrangement. They get the product, you get the money. First off, this contract should specify what you must do, and what they must do, for the contract to be ""satisfied"". This isn't necessarily just product for money; your client may be under deadlines to approve the product in various stages of work in process. Depending on the product, the client may be required to provide starting materials (like existing logos/slogans for advertising/marketing graphics), information on or access to computer systems (for software or infrastructure consulting, or accounting auditing), etc. Second, if you provide a tangible product like graphics or software, the contract should clearly state that ""intellectual property transfers on satisfaction of contract""; they don't own what you have made until they have accepted it and paid you accordingly. If they try to stiff you by taking what you made them and using it before you've been paid, you can take them to the cleaner's for copyright violations. Third, you should structure a payment schedule; don't do too much for free. You can get the money in thirds, for instance; a third up front, a third at some defined halfway point and a third on final delivery and acceptance. Lastly, you should stipulate that the client is responsible for all expenses incurred by you as a result of their failure to pay as stipulated, up to and including attorney's fees. Definitely have a lawyer draft these agreements; contract law is a many-layered area of law with hundreds of years of case law and slightly different nuances in every state. A competent lawyer will know things that can and can't be stipulated in a contract, and if you try to do it alone you'll wish you hadn't when the contract's tossed out by a judge because of some technicality. If they refuse to pay, get the lawyer on the phone and file suit. A well-written contract drafted by a competent lawyer, which you have lived up to on your end, will give your client no loopholes to slip through. As far as recovering damages, it shouldn't matter whether he's in the U.S. or not; if he does business in the U.S. then he very probably has money in banks that have to listen to U.S. courts (or at least court orders)."
NapiGator SEO is Tucson's leading SEO Agency. Our enterprise grade SEO services have helped hundreds of clients across the globe to grow their rankings, traffic, leads, and most importantly, their bottom line. Our stringent quality guidelines ensure that all our clients see outstanding results, and that nothing slips through the cracks. Having been featured in Huffington Post, INC, and Moz, our experts are on the cutting edge of this fast paced industry, and are ready to help grow your business. A letter of credit is commonly used by importers who want to ensure that their product is shipped before paying the exporter. The exporter has a guarantee that the payment for the goods will be received once the shipment has been made.  It is used to resolve a Game Theory type situation. For example, you are buying a car from China for $40,000 USD. The exporter of the car asks for the money before he will ship the car, but if you give him the money, then he has no incentive (aside from legal pressures) to ship the car. Instead you sign a letter of credit for the transaction, which basically sends your payment to the exporters bank, but puts a hold on it until the exporter proves that he has shipped the car and proved that he has insured the shipment against damages. If your friend thinks he can live there for free due to his unique interpretation of contract law, he is mistaken. He'll get evicted if he doesn't pay rent, and likely end up with a judgement against him for unpaid rent. At its core, a rental agreement ensures that in exchange for paying rent, he may occupy the property. You can argue up and down about payment methods, but the fact remains he must pay rent in order to live there. Your friend MAY have an argument that he could move out and not be subject to penalty for breaking the lease because the payment terms changed. He'd have to give notice and would still owe for the time he occupied the property. There's just no way he can live there for free. He may find this out the hard way. Keep in mind that credit takes time to build.   Your best short-term solution is to save enough cash to put enough of a down-payment that the lower loan-to-value ratio outweighs the lack of credit history.  If there's enough equity to ensure that the bank will get their money back if they have to foreclose, you will have a better chance of securing financing. In addition, the stability and consistency of your employment may also be a factor that makes it difficult for you to get a loan without a substantial down-payment. Finally, don't ignore the risk present in resting a property that you have a loan on.  Make sure you have a plan in place to pay your payments if the other half goes unrented for several months, or you risk losing the entire property. My advice is to rent somewhere else for enough time that you can save up a lot of cash to purchase a duplex rather than getting in a rush and doing something unwise (like apply for a bunch of credit cards you don't need). "Banks have a financial, and regulational duty called ""Know your customer"", established to avoid a number of historical problems occurring again, such as money laundering, terrorism financing, fraud, etc. Thanks to the scale, and scope of the problem (millions of customers, billions of transactions a day), the way they're handling this usually involves fuzzy logics matching, looking for irregular patterns, problem escalation, and other warning signs. When exceeding some pre-set limit, these signal clues are then filtered, and passed on for human inspection. Needless to say, these algorithms are not perfect, although, thanks to financial pressure, they are improving. In order to understand why your trading account has been suspended, it's useful to look at the incentives: false positives -suspending your trade, and assuming you guilty until proven otherwise- could cost them merely your LTV (lifetime value of customer -how much your business brings in as profit); while false negatives -not catching you while engaging in activities listed above- might cost them multi-month investigations, penalties, and court.  Ultimately, this isn't against you. I've been with the bank for 15 years and the money in the accounts has been very slowly accumulated via direct-deposit paychecks over that time. From this I gather the most likely explanation, is that you've hit somekind of account threshold, that the average credit-happy customers usually do not exceed, which triggered a routine checkup. How do you deal with it? Practice puppetry! There is only one way to survive angry customers emotionally: you have to realize that they’re not angry at you; they’re angry at your business, and you just happen to be a convenient representative of that business. And since they’re treating you like a puppet, an iconic stand-in for the real business, you need to treat yourself as a puppet, too. Pretend you’re a puppeteer. The customer is yelling at the puppet. They’re not yelling at you. They’re angry with the puppet. Your job is to figure out, “gosh, what can I make the puppet say that will make this person a happy customer?”  In an investigation case, go with boredom: The puppet doesn't care, have no feelings, and is eternally patient. Figure out what are the most likely words that will have the matter ""mentally resolved"" from the investigator's point of view, tell them what they have to hear, and you'll have case closed in no time. Hope this helps." If there was some contract in place (even a verbal agreement) that he would complete the work you asked for in return for payment, then you don't have to pay him anything. He hasn't completed the work and what he did do was stolen from another person. He hasn't held up his end of the agreement, so you don't owe squat. I took littleadv's advice and talked to an accountant today. Regardless of method of payment, my US LLC does not have to withhold taxes or report the payment as payments to contractors (1099/1042(S)) to the IRS; it is simply a business expense.  He said this gets more complicated if the recipient is working in the US (regardless of nationality), but that is not my case Online payment service providers should allow you to agree to payments from customers and secure your company against scams. To fight against innovative scammers, you need to take additional safety measures in defending your business. Improving your payment security should be a concern to website associated with scams