Grumble. I'm dealing with one of my least favorite things with clients and that's payment terms. I'm in the middle of a project where we were originally doing just labor and design so the terms were set at Net 45 with monthly milestone payments. Not a problem and easy to manage.

Now we've added equipment into the mix and are getting upset that I'm not willing to do equipment on anything other than a Net 0. We're talking well over $50,000 of equipment at a time, and they want to do it on Net 45. It's so frustrating. That's essentially asking for my company to extend them credit for 45 days. Not going to happen.

I see why they would ask, but NOPE.

What makes sense for people who do not want to pay money is almost never good for the ones owed the money. Yikes.

Services are Net 45, tangible goods are Net 0. That's basic.

That's pretty much my take, they were just being cranky about it. I get to define what my terms are for tangible goods.

We are the same way. We can talk terms for labor, but not when we are laying out cash for equipment. We ain't the bank.

Thank you gang, this is the validation I needed. My client is sort of making it personal and saying, if we need to work with cash flow problems then lets address that and that he's done $1,000,000+ purchases on Net 60 in the past. My attitude is that's fine, but that's not me, and I get to define terms on tangible good. If he wants to deal with a company that will do Net 60 on that much equipment then he can go seek them out and see how expensive their bid is on the rest of the project, since I know their overhead will be much much higher than mine.

Sometimes I feel like I'm apologizing for being a small company, and I just shouldn't have to do that.

You really shouldn't.

I get quibbling stuff sometimes too. It's a pain in the ass, but I look at it from the perspective of 'nice try' and move on.

I wish people weren't the way they are, but eh. My thought is that it must suck to be them and I won't poke holes in my soul because they aren't better people.

And what you said about freeing people up to try their shenanigans elsewhere...I endorse that 100%. In my experience, that clears the way for better clients!

Yeah, don't apologize. You're not asking for anything unreasonable at all.

I just finished one of my major tasks, and it was a huge relief, but also brings to light a lot of the things I need to get (and keep) more current on. I'm making progress from my backlog, but it just seems like so much sometimes. And this is with me being freed up to do the work by the SO picking up my slack in a different area. I know I'm not incompetent, but it's sometimes hard not to feel that way when I've gotten so far behind. And there's no one to blame but me! </Chris Stapleton>

There is so much outreach I could be doing and am not. No body to blame but me, indeed!

It's not like I am NOT getting things done, but not nearly as much as I could.

Just saying that makes me want to take a nap.

Sigh.

The equipment total is now approaching $300,000. So totally not the bank on this.