Your editor gets paid on the date you agreed, whether or not the client did

A client paid nineteen days late and I had four editors expecting money on the first.

That week decided more about what this agency is than any positioning document I have written since.

The decision itself takes about ten seconds once you see it clearly. Getting to the point of seeing it clearly took me longer than it should have.

1. These are two unrelated obligations

I had them filed as one thing. Money comes in, money goes out, the second depends on the first.

They are not connected. My agreement with a client is one contract. My agreement with an editor is a different contract, with a different person, containing a date.

The client being late changes nothing about the second document. It changes my cash position, which is my problem, because taking on that risk is roughly what the margin is for.

Once I wrote those as two separate sentences the answer stopped being difficult.

2. What passing it down is

If an editor's pay date moves because a client moved, that editor is financing my business.

They are extending me credit, unsecured, without being asked and without being compensated for it. If I described it that way in a contract nobody would sign.

It also inverts who is carrying the risk. The editor has one client relationship and no diversification. I have several. Pushing volatility onto the least diversified person in the chain is the wrong direction for it to flow.

3. The complication: I nearly did it anyway

I want to be accurate about this rather than tell it as a story where I behaved well.

I drafted the message. It explained the client situation, apologised, and proposed paying a week late. It was a reasonable, honest, well-written message and I was about ten seconds from sending it.

What stopped me was thinking about which editor would read it first. The one with the least other work.

I covered it from personal money that month, which was not a system and worked exactly once. The system came afterwards, which is the wrong order and it is the order it usually happens in.

4. The float, and how small it turned out to be

The fix is a reserve covering one full contractor payment cycle with no client money arriving.

That number was much smaller than the figure I had been avoiding calculating. The thing I was scared of was a catastrophe. The thing that actually happens is one invoice arriving three weeks late.

One cycle covers that. It does not cover a client not paying at all, and it is not supposed to.

I built it by treating it as a fixed cost for four months instead of taking the money out. Slower than it sounds and completely unremarkable once done.

5. Fix the calendar before you fix the revenue

Most agency cash problems are a scheduling problem wearing a revenue problem's clothes.

Every client invoice was due on the first. Every contractor was paid on the first. So a single late payer created a gap on exactly the day I had the least room.

Now client due dates are staggered across the month and contractor payment sits after the bulk of client money is expected. Same revenue, same costs, no crunch.

That change cost nothing and removed more risk than the reserve did.

6. Deposits, and getting over being awkward about them

A deposit before work starts is normal in every industry and I avoided asking for one for months because it felt presumptuous when I was young and new.

Nobody refused. One client asked why I had not been doing it already.

Being young made me assume a standard commercial term was a favour I was requesting, which is a specific version of a problem I wrote about in getting taken seriously when you're obviously young. The deposit is the single highest-leverage fix on this list and I was the only obstacle to it.

7. If you genuinely cannot pay

It will happen to someone reading this, so here is the version that preserves the relationship.

Say it immediately, before the date, not after. Give one specific date rather than a range or a hope. Pay the smallest amounts first, because a small payment is a larger share of that person's month.

Then hit the date you gave. One honest message with a hard date that lands is survivable. Three optimistic messages with moving dates ends it, and the editor tells other editors, correctly.

What you cannot do is go quiet. Silence reads as a decision, and the decision it reads as is the worst available one.

The short version

• Treat the client contract and the contractor contract as unrelated, because they are.
• Pay on the agreed date and chase the client on a separate track.
• Build a reserve covering one full contractor cycle, which is smaller than you fear.
• Stagger client due dates so they do not all land the day payroll goes out.
• Take a deposit before work starts, and stop treating a standard term as a favour.
• If you truly cannot pay, say it early, give one hard date, pay the smallest people first.
• Never go quiet. Silence is the only unrecoverable move here.

I write these up because the version I needed at nineteen was somebody admitting they nearly sent the message.