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What is your relationship with them like? Do they know you are heavily reliant on their business?
If you have a fairly grown up relationship, I would be inclined to discuss the issue with them openly. Tell them that the lack of any deposit is hurting you and while it was manageable for a time, it cannot continue. You really want to retain their business etc and would be open to a negotiation on the amount of deposit (if that would work for you) or better payment terms from them on the remainder (whichever is least painful).
Remind them that they would have to revert to this practice anyway should they threaten to ditch you.
stevo_com
Perhaps a question for this oddly empty thread rather than AQA...?
OR
How Not To Run A Business
I run a video production company. About 80% of our work is through advertising/marketing agencies either as 3rd party producer or white label under their own banner. One of the agencies we work with is particularly shit at paying which is frankly fucking our cashflow.
The problem (my own fault) is that this particular agency was never charged a deposit for the first job we did for them and they haven't been charged since on subsequent projects. So we're spending sometimes significant dollar on stock footage, illustrators, animators, camera crew etc then doing the work, delivering the work, then left waiting for months on end to get paid. Our freelancers get paid by us on time in a misguided notion from me that "oh, they'll pay soon". Obviously they don't. I also feel quite strongly that just because we have cashflow issues, people doing the work for us shouldn't have to suffer it too.
Other agencies we work with pay 50% up front as standard. This agency doesn't but we've done business with them for over a year now and there is a fair bit of work from them every couple of months. We do get paid, just not in a way you could consider to be 'on time'. So we end up living hand to mouth: we cough up, we're short, our hairs grey, we get their paid, relief, they send another job at us and we're out of pocket again etc.
Annoyingly we completed one job for them last October - they paid half but their client requested some additional work we hadn't quoted for. They said they're send amendments but that direction never came through (stopped chasing after about 6 months) and unsurprisingly neither did second half of payment.
Obvious answer is obvious - be less of a walkover and stop doing business with them. But we're newish (2/3 years) and eager to build up a quality body of work so don't want to risk not having that work even if it doesn't make things easy for us in the short term (we started the business with no money whatsoever so it's not like we weren't expecting it to be a financial challenge).
Obvious answer is also obvious - change the terms and submit T&Cs with stricter goalposts about revisions/amendments to work, 50% up front etc. Possibly but again the fear is that it leads to them ditching us.
We produce very good work, very competitively priced (especially for them given their credit terms), so there's no obvious reason for them to ditch us unless they're a bigger bunch of cunts than I had them pegged for and they've been planning this all along but that seems an absurd way to do business (no more than our own I suppose) for so little return.
Obvious answer is less obvious: ?
Suggestions welcome.