Longtime lurker here. In Texas. Videographer on monthly contract for flat fee, invoiced every two weeks.
To start off, I was stupid and didn't do any formal contract. Neither of us saw the need as the CEO and I got along great, and I felt like I would be a key asset to the company, so of course they would never leave me without pay…
To do my job effectively, they let me borrow indefinitely a couple of pieces of equipment for me to use on their tasks as I saw fit. About $800 worth. I am an independent contractor, and they even said I could use the equipment for other clients as needed.
Two weeks ago I turned in my final project of the year. No reply from them for a week, I assumed all was okay and no revisions needed, I submitted my invoice for it (my third outstanding invoice).
Of course with net 30 payment terms, having multiple outstanding invoices is not uncommon. However, one of them has become overdue at this point. (Later on as I defaulted to net30 in my invoices due dates, I found an email from them at the start of our relationship stating that they would pay net 14 on my invoives.)
So a week ago, I compiled my three outstanding invoices into one email, and shot them over as a convience to them, since they are a fairly disorganized company. They finally replied yesterday and stated something along the lines of –
Received.
Will review and get back to you when I am in the office next week.
I do need to discuss a number of things in person so are you free either tuesday or wednesday next week.
I have a couple of personal projects so need the following that is ours:
Pancake Lense
Drone
Stabilizer
All footage shot so far
As we continue our marketing push, I need to get all the stuff we have together and that includes equipment and all footage that we have paid for.
Please include everything even unedited work onto the google drive.
…
First if all, kinda a dumb email, saying they paid for all the footage and need it, when there are three unpaid invoices (or a month and a half of work). And bold to assume I even kept the footage after projects were finished. That stuff takes up many GBs of space.
So my thoughts are, okay, so pay the overdue invoice, at least, before we even discuss anything. No promises of it was sent, money must hit my account. And as uploading all this stuff and meeting with them (2hr roundtrip btw), I assume I won't be getting any sort of compensation for the new “tasks”.
Net 30 invoices
1 – due 12/28
2 – due 1/12
3 – due 1/23
I thinks that's all the backstory, just looking for advice on what to do. Do I stall until the next invoice is “due” so I can collect at least another one hopefully? Thoughts on all of this?