My standard contract specifies that payment is due x number of days. If I haven't received payment within x + 14 days, I stop all work and do not continue until payment has been made. If payment is late a second time, I require payment and possibly a retainer before work will continue. Need of the retainer is totally my decision.

I also have a clause that I retain all rights to the code until final payment has been made at the end of the project at which time I assign rights to the client.


>I had a good client i.e. excellent company that was a pain because their office manager would just be slow to pay everyone...a classical cheap accountant. The company was swimming in money so it was not a case of them not having enough in their account (it was a professional sports organization). He just liked to pay everyone 60 or 90 days just because of his personality. I knew this ahead of time as I was referred to the company by a company insider who said to watch out for this and to not be surprised.
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>So we worked off a retainer. I would say that was not "normal" and I agree with you Al and that it can cause a perception problem with the client. In this case, it did not matter because the head boss wanted the work done and he would sign off on anything (reasonable). It just had to be set up to protect me from the bean counting accountant. This was back in the days when you could make decent interest on term deposits and so I figure he just loved to make a bit extra interest.
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>But there was a downside to it as well - I started to do work for one of their associated leagues and I also asked for a retainer. Once when I did not deliver some work on my side (partly because they were not paid up and partly because I was juggling too many balls) when asked I said I was waiting for the next retainer - wrong answer, I guess this had stuck in their "gall" and they said "forget it" and told me to quit working on the project. Because I was dealing with a different office, I just treated them all the same as "bean counting Herb" and I should not have.
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>Anyhow, those are my ramblings. You sortof gotta know how your client might respond to the request (if it is not normal practice in the industry or country).
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>Albert