maltrout512":2a6htpja said:
I had a small situation compared to you some time back. I pulled all the timber off site as it had not been paid by the customer. No further action was taken BUT I yes I could have been had in court by the customer, for taking wood that I bought and had not been paid for,(customer) off his property. Theft. The law may have changed but IMO I don't think so. Money down for materials plus 15% labour (time) if it goes wrong, pull out and walk away. I may well be out of line but I didn't like the situation and still don't.
Here, a clause to the effect "goods are mine until paid for" is effective. I'd guess it should be in quotes and invoices.
Regular invoicing should help. Goods are not used until paid for, work ceases if there's a payment delay.
We had some landscaping done a while back. There was a fair bit of work, but the young fellows were on the job one day, elsewhere another. It was entirely unsatisfactory from our POV. I speculate that they were doing some smaller jobs to maintain an income until they finished ours.
They could easily have divided ours into three jobs (front, back, fence) and had progress payments, the money was in the bank waiting for the work to be done.
I think you need to establish milestones that both sides are happy with, and normally "hours worked" would not be satisfactory to me as a client.
Oh, if you provide the goods, you should charge a margin. It's costing you time which keeps you from other work, and you carry some risk as evidenced here.
None of this helps now; the best advice I can offer now is to not muck around. The faster you act, and the more serious you seem, the better your prospects of getting the money. If you have problems extracting the money, there may be other creditors too.