Freelance problems. Five problems that clients have with freelancers

How to run a business legally? Contracts with customers and typical problems of their preparation. How, when and why to sue? Common legal mistakes freelancers make and what to do about them.

Freelancing as a way of doing business for some specialists is a temporary stage when they escaped from the "yoke" of the employer, but have not yet created their own business. For others, a kind of permanent state when a person is least of all bound by any obligations and tries to concentrate on the essence of the work performed.

Most of the freelancers I interviewed and know, who have tasted exorbitant freedom from any formalities and obligations, make a lot of legal mistakes that complicate them " free swimming”, make you return to an uncomfortable office or suffer losses and disappointments. But there are also those who have made freelancing their business, have learned how to search for and properly formalize relationships with customers, have experience in litigation and, through trial and error, have found how to make their freelancing predictable and secure enough. In this article, I will talk specifically about the legal problems of freelancers and how these problems can and should be dealt with.

How to do business legally

It is no secret that the state requires you to decide whether you are running a business, are you an employee for employment contract or, remaining an ordinary citizen, you only occasionally provide services under a civil law contract. Entrepreneurial activity, that is, activity for the systematic extraction of profit, can be carried out essentially in two forms: the creation legal entity(most often it is an LLC) or registration as individual entrepreneur(IP). Russian law classifies freelancing as entrepreneurial activity no matter how much you get: 1 thousand rubles or 200 thousand rubles a day or a year.

If you provide services systematically (twice or more during the year), then you are an entrepreneur and the usual "earthly laws" apply to you.

It does not matter where and with what services, devices or applications you carry out such activities. I don’t want to complicate things, but even when providing services through a site located outside of Russia, you are subject to both the laws of the country where the server is physically located and Russian legislation while you remain a tax resident and citizen of the Russian Federation.

For the lack of registration as a company or individual entrepreneur, there is administrative responsibility from 500 rubles to 2 thousand rubles. In essence, this is not much money, but the procedure for bringing to responsibility is pretty exhausting on the nerves. The prosecutor's office can file a lawsuit in court to prohibit you from conducting such activities at all until you obtain an entrepreneurial status. And cases of this kind are becoming more and more frequent. The prosecutor's office as the "eye of the sovereign" is called upon to ensure that there are no such violations of the law.

If you conduct business “on a grand scale” and this caused large damage to citizens, organizations or the state, or is associated with the receipt of proceeds from the sale of goods or services on a large scale, i.e. from 1.5 million rubles, then such actions can be qualified as a crime under Part 1 of Art. 171 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Illegal business". Responsibility is different: a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles or up to 6 months of arrest.

In practice, almost any citizen can now register a company, and even more so an individual entrepreneur. There are many services that allow you to do this. Some banks, along with opening an account, offer this service for free. The cost of registering a turnkey LLC with the payment of state duty ranges from 5 to 12 thousand rubles. To register as an individual entrepreneur, you just need to fill out a form with your passport data, which can even be submitted online at tax office. The state duty for registering an individual entrepreneur is only 800 rubles. The registration period in both cases is approximately 6-7 calendar days, and this deadline is indeed respected. So why take the risk when starting a business is so easy?

Whom to be: LLC or IP?

Perhaps the most common question asked by novice entrepreneurs is what is better to register: an LLC or an individual entrepreneur? Practice shows that the vast majority of freelancers either do not register at all, or register as individual entrepreneurs. You need to understand that not a single really serious customer will send money to a freelancer “on a card”. This fact is pushing many to open IP.

An important advantage of registering as an individual entrepreneur is that all the money received by an individual entrepreneur can be freely withdrawn and spent, because this is his personal money as an entrepreneur, as a citizen. Even taxes from this amount, the IP should not pay immediately, but only at the beginning of the next quarter. It is not so easy to legally withdraw money in a company, and even more so to do it “for free” without paying taxes .

The vast majority of activities that freelancers do in Russia do not require any permission or license. This is also true when you happen to OKVED codes Specify the licensed type of activity.

The principle is simple: until you have engaged in a licensed activity, you do not need to draw up anything additionally .

The taxation of organizations and individual entrepreneurs is the same, i.е. you can engage in a type of activity that falls under the “imputation”, and be at least an individual entrepreneur, at least an LLC. The same applies to the choice of "simplified", which can be in the amount of both 6% of income and 15% of income, reduced by the amount of expenses. The latter option is not very suitable for the service sector, as it is beneficial for those who have large expenses in the final cost of the goods or services sold, those of which the Tax Code of the Russian Federation allows to take into account. Usually this is a trade where there is a significant markup on the goods sold.

We form relationships with customers

Such well-known exchanges for freelancers in Russia, such as, for example, freelance.ru and fl.ru. offer services to control the timing of the order and guarantee payment for the freelancer. The service monitors the deadline for the execution of the order, captures its essence, which is agreed on initial stage between freelancer and client. Legally, this is the same contract that is automatically concluded between the customer and the freelancer, where the freelance exchange acts as an intermediary agent between them.

Not everyone knows, but in the agreement that you “sign”, agreeing to the terms of work through fl.ru and freelance.ru, it is written that, unless otherwise agreed between the freelancer and the customer, all exclusive rights to the created intellectual property are transferred to the customer at the time of acceptance of the order.

It is important for the customer to indicate in the task what really needs to be obtained as a result, and for the freelancer himself to agree only on what he can accomplish within the agreed time frame.

All interaction takes place on the assignment page, where the customer and the freelancer exchange messages, questions, developed materials, and finished files. It is the timing of the placement of such materials, their compliance with the task that determines whether the freelancer will receive his money if it comes to arbitration.

This is a service that fl.ru provides for Safe Deal users when the customer does not accept the order or the freelancer does not transfer the result of his work to the customer, which allows resolving the dispute between the parties to the transaction. Arbitration can either return the prepayment for all or part of the order to the customer, or pay it to the freelancer or make a partial payment (refund) if it establishes that the work was not completed in full, of poor quality or not on time.

The cost of services to control the timing of the order and guarantee payment for a freelancer ranges from 5% to 14.9% of the transaction. To the expenses of customers, you need to add a commission of payment systems for depositing money in the amount of about 6% and for withdrawing money by a freelancer in the amount of 2-3.5%. If the customer is a legal entity or individual entrepreneur, then the costs are simply the cost of a payment order in the amount of 10-20 rubles.

But freelancers do not always find customers through freelance exchanges, and some simply do not want to overpay for such services, they want to get paid immediately, so they most often do not conclude any contracts at all.

What to do if there is no contract in the usual sense, and the client refuses to pay for the work? Your further actions depend on how exactly you formalized your agreements with the customer:

1.There is a signed contract, in which the terms of reference say what and in what time you must do. Negotiate with the customer and, if you do not achieve a result, go to court with a lawyer.

2.The contract with all technical specifications was signed "via the Internet", i.e. each scanned his signed version of the contract and sent it to each other. The court may recognize such an agreement as concluded if you can prove that:

sent the contract to the customer and received a signed scan from him too;

the customer partially paid under the contract (the details of your contract are indicated in the payment order, and the customer will not be able to bring another copy of the contract that you “also” signed);

the customer gave you something that could only be with him (measurements of buildings, technical documentation, restricted information, sources of old design layouts, etc.), and this is what you need to use to provide the service.

3. The contract is signed, but it does not contain any specifics on the ordered service, or the contract is not signed and there is only correspondence. In this case, you need to look at the correspondence between you. There is a "paper" correspondence - excellent. If it was from the email addresses specified in the contract, or the customer's corporate mailbox, and it contains the necessary "specifics", then you are lucky and you have agreed on the subject of the contract - you can confidently go to court. If there is no correspondence, and the customer accepted the work and there is a document about it (a certificate of services rendered, a report signed by him) or the customer used the result of your work, then in court you will have to prove not only that you transferred this work to the customer, but also How much does this kind of work usually cost? Therefore, do not be lazy to issue invoices and sign acts of services rendered, which indicate what you did or how much you worked, what result you handed over to the customer. Fortunately, there are a lot of services that make such documents.

4. The contract was signed not by the person indicated in it, or this person (director, accountant, manager, etc.) did not have the authority to sign it. If there were payments under such an agreement (to the question of the need for an advance payment), then the customer will most likely be recognized by the court as having entered into such an agreement, even if the director turned out to be a non-director. If the customer officially accepted the result of your work and, moreover, used it, this will also indirectly indicate that it was he who made such an order.

5.Working conditions were agreed by SMS, Skype, instant messengers. As in paragraph 3, the question will arise about identifying the person who ordered such a service from you (you will have to make inquiries to telecom operators, etc.), about what relation he has to the customer company or whether you need to involve him personally as customer. Such disputes require you and your lawyer to have a very clear understanding of the functioning of such services and the fact that they may initially be issued to fictitious or nominee persons. But even in such a situation, it remains possible to obtain the IP address from which the account was used, and through a judicial request to the telecom operator to track the customer. More technically savvy customers may prudently use IP address spoofing or exit from addresses where a large number of people who have nothing to do with the customer have access to the Internet. Exit with mobile phone allows you to track the phone number, but there is no full guarantee that the phone is not issued to the old woman from the next entrance. And the question whether you will try to collect and receive money from her or not remains not only a matter of principle and patience, because such an identification of the customer in court will be a non-trivial procedure.

6.Negotiations with the customer were conducted in person and by phone, there is no correspondence, especially a contract. In this case, it remains only to write letters, claims and provoke the customer with an answer like “your work was not completed on time”, “you did not fulfill such and such a condition”, which will directly indicate that there was some kind of relationship between you. However, in such situations, it is extremely difficult to get the agreed money, since there is a high probability that you will not be able to prove what exactly was ordered from you and what exactly you transferred to such a customer and at what price.

How do we sue a client?

If you are an ordinary citizen, then you apply to the district (city) court at the location (registration, place of residence) of the defendant. The customer cannot claim that the contract is invalid if you do not have the status of an individual entrepreneur or do not represent a company. If you are an individual entrepreneur or a legal entity, you will first have to file a valid claim and wait 30 days before filing a claim with the arbitration court. Such rules are effective June 1, 2016. But if you have written evidence that the customer acknowledges the fact that the work was done, but simply cannot or does not want to pay, then apply for a court order and attach this correspondence. The court will issue a court order within 10 days if the amount of the claim does not exceed 400 thousand rubles. This court order can be immediately presented to the debtor's bank (and the bank will transfer the money to you within 2 working days) or transferred to bailiffs to initiate enforcement proceedings (longer).

If the customer does not recognize the debt, then you can file a claim in the simplified procedure, which involves an absentee (without a summons to court) consideration of the case with the placement of all documents on the website kad.arbitr.ru. In this order, only disputes up to 250 thousand rubles are considered, where the defendants are individual entrepreneurs, and up to 500 thousand rubles, where the defendant is an organization. After filing a claim with the court, you will receive a court ruling, which will contain a special code for accessing the case materials.

The cost of the services of lawyers for the recovery through the court of payment under a service agreement is usually slightly less than under a work contract, which, according to lawyers, is more complicated. In fact, the complexity depends on how well the contract is prepared and what evidence of the work (service) the freelancer has. This accordingly determines the probability of winning the case (a positive motivator for a lawyer), and the duration of the court case, and hence the price. Preparation of a claim costs from 5 thousand rubles, conducting a case in the court of the Kaliningrad region is unlikely to cost less than 20 thousand rubles. But still, this means that in some cases the cost of a lawyer's services is more than the money that the customer must pay. Unscrupulous customers often take advantage of this. Add to this that the customer may be in Khabarovsk or Kamchatka, and you are in Kaliningrad, which allows such customers to feel more secure. In fact, it is quite possible to find a lawyer in any region via the Internet.

The freelancer should know that it is possible to simply "forget" that he was owed money. But how many times are you ready to “forget” like this, do you have enough readiness to continue working like this and what incentive do you give to such customers? Another option is to stand up for your rights to the end, but conduct the case rationally for a long time and treat legal costs like paying electricity and buying paper - all these are just your operating costs in business. After all, no one has canceled the recovery of court costs from the culprit, you just need to find the money now so that they return to you later.

Common legal mistakes freelancers make and what to do about them

Absence of a contract (terms of reference). We have already discussed above that the absence of a contract is one of the main troubles for a freelancer when he has to prove that there were any agreements at all. Often, in order not to pay, customers simply refuse to "saw this freelancer." The “sleight of hand” of some customers leads to the fact that they keep both copies of the contract for themselves, and the contractor has nothing left. The desire to get started quickly also plays a bad joke with freelancers. First, do not neglect the development, approval and signing of the contract. You will learn a lot about your customer when you offer him to sign a contract. If he refuses to sign the contract or introduces conditions that are incomprehensible and beneficial only to him, then you will once again decide for yourself whether it is worth working with him. Secondly, it will be beneficial for both if you offer to develop the same terms of reference for a fee. The customer will get what he wants as a result, and there will be no unjustified expectations, and you, as a freelancer, will receive a clear document on which you will build your work.

Wrong contract. It is quite difficult to describe all the errors that may occur in the contract. One thing can be said for sure: a professional lawyer should be involved in the development of the contract. Unfamiliar accountant, do not download a sample from the Internet, do not do it yourself. The main document that you will work with every time with a new client should be prepared by a professional. You wouldn't go to a general practitioner or a plumber for dental treatment, would you?

Unsettled terms, lack of definitions. If you are making a specific product, then you use professional terms in your work. Do not forget to enter their transcript, both the customer and the court should understand you if it comes to a dispute. This will help in the case of the latter to operate with exactly the wording that you included in the contract. I will say more, even when developing a design, the question arises: what is it? Designers often enter terms such as “design concept”, “site design”, programmers and site developers indicate “IT systems”, “ software package", "website". Explain what you are creating so that even a person far from your profession can easily understand everything, write how the result of your work can look like or be used, what is included in this work or what its result consists of.

An error in the description of the result of the work. Services and works can be divided into several types depending on the form of the end result. As a result of some, a certain created thing of the real world (a picture, a drawing, a certain product made to order) is transferred, others are electronic document: a file with a text translation, a photo, a drawing, a design layout, a multimedia file, a database, just some text. In some of them, it is essential what the performer did with the source code provided by the customer, what creative, professional element he introduced, in the other - a purely technical task: just carefully and without errors to make a transcript from the audio recording, collect a database with addresses and phone numbers the right people. For example, if you write that you are transferring an audio file, then indicate what exactly will be on this recording, what you do with the source materials (mix the sound or clean it up), make an arrangement or record a performance on musical instruments, in what format you transfer the finished material, whether you transfer source files. There are service-processes where payment can occur for a certain amount of time during which the service is provided (animators, promoters, subscription services from lawyers, accountants), or time is used only as a means of billing (interpretation, performances by musicians, photo and video filming ). In some types of activity, the end result is only the final stage in the provision of a service (often a mental activity), and most of this work is done without creating or with minimal appearance of any signs of work (development of implementation schemes, ideas, concepts). For example, in legal services the result of providing a very expensive and lengthy service may simply be the answer: "It cannot be done legally." But lawyers solve this problem by preparing a detailed opinion on why they came to this conclusion. There are services where the result cannot be guaranteed due to objective reasons or due to insufficient information about the problem ( medical services, services of trainers, lawyers in court), so it is impossible to guarantee the desired result. What to do when the result of your work is an extremely intangible thing? Formulate the provision of a service as a process, indicating specific features of the result or the process itself, what and how you do, what you interact with, what information you receive and how you process, describe the service as informational. Indicate a specific result, if you can achieve it in any case, formulate the possibility of achieving a negative result. Break your service delivery process into stages, define events that will be uniquely associated with the transition from one stage to another, or a period of time if the moment of such an event cannot be determined.

creative value. Many disputes between representatives creative professions and their customers arises precisely because of a misunderstanding of what the result should be in terms of the creative level. This level is almost impossible to describe, it can only be subjectively determined by the portfolio before concluding an agreement with a specific contractor. Of course, if the design is made with obvious violations of the color combination, the principles of composition are violated and all this together looks unambiguous and tastes like children's drawing, then the customer will still have to prove later in court that, based on the terms of reference, he was counting on the design in a certain style (modern or, conversely, stylization for a certain period of time). It is much easier to appeal to the customer when he was offered fewer options for design layouts or logos than is expressly provided for in the contract. But if the latter is a quantitative indicator, then the designer can say to the first question that "he sees it that way." However, if the terms of reference indicate a specific style that the freelancer did not adhere to, then it cannot be said that the order has been completed. The answer to the question of what to consider as separate design options is also subjective and evaluative. It is impossible to describe exactly how much one option should differ from another.

Break down work into steps prescribe payment for each individual stage and the transition to the next stage after accepting the previous one. Firstly, you will immediately receive a certain part of the money and understand how the customer accepts the service. Secondly, the fact of accepting the service, and even more so the signed act on this, will exclude the possibility of challenging the work as a whole, when it has already been de facto completed.

Timing. Respect the deadlines that you yourself have determined in the contract. Prescribe achievable deadlines that will be consistent with each other even under the most unusual set of circumstances and the actions of both parties to the contract. Keep in mind that it is initially assumed that you are doing the work or providing the service “on your own”, and if you “include in the work” the customer, who must provide information, materials or things to fulfill the contract within a certain time frame, and for yourself you also set very specific deadlines completion of the stage, then write for the customer (according to the law, this also applies) in the contract that the deadline for the execution of the stage is extended for the period of delay of the customer.

Full prepayment - not your money. Getting a 100% upfront payment is the dream of many freelancers, but in the conditions of anonymity on the Internet, customers who do not trust the performers or do not want to remove such an effective “accelerator” for performers do not agree to such conditions. However, not all performers know that the customer has the right to refuse (essentially terminate the contract) from the provision of the service at any time, and the freelancer does not have the right to continue it after receiving such a notification. He must transfer the result of his work to the customer, issue him an invoice for the services rendered and calculate the costs incurred. If it turns out that the service is not fully rendered, then the freelancer must return the remuneration received in proportion to the size of the unproven part of the service. The terms of the agreement on the prohibition of such a unilateral refusal are recognized by the courts as invalid . The condition that the prepayment (advance payment), as well as other unearned amounts by the contractor are not returned, in some cases is recognized by the courts as legal, in others the courts recognize such a condition as invalid.

Difficulties in proving the performance of a work or service. Despite the obviousness of the answer to this question for the performer, the courts are great amount cases in which customers claim that the performer did not perform the work at all, did not perform what was required under the contract, or was performed by another person. As noted above, fixing the act of performing work allows you to partially solve this problem, but does not completely exclude possible claims from the customer. The contractor, within 3 years of the limitation period, must keep evidence that he started work, how and where, with whom he performed, save intermediate results, drafts, sketches, work files, correspondence with his employees, subcontractors, etc., t .e. everything that can confirm that it was the contractor who did everything that the customer received. It may seem absurd to keep it for so long, but even after 2 years 11 months and 29 days (and it is in the last days of this period) lawsuits from dishonest customers most often appear in court. Keep in mind that in the event of a dispute, the court needs to prove not only the very fact of creating a certain result that you agreed with the customer, but also the fact that you handed it over to the customer within the agreed time. After all, there are such types of work or goods that can disappear without a trace, such as an ice town or sand figures on the beach. Evidence of existence will only be documents, and if there are none, then witnesses. But there are not always witnesses and not always witnesses can clearly say what they saw if they are not professionals in a certain field. This is especially true for technically complex work (for example, the development software, setting up the site engine) or voluminous hidden work that simply cannot be seen by external observers (work through the administrative panel of the CMS, applications, database, work on its transfer, etc.).

The customer can pretend that you did not give him the necessary result of the work, and now he has lost interest and ordered it from someone else. The customer can also file a counterclaim if, due to “your slowness,” some of his orders or events were disrupted, and the amount of damages can, in principle, be anything. No, it will not be easy for the customer to recover damages from you, for this he needs to prove that it was because of your mistakes that both the problem and the losses themselves arose. It often happens that the real reasons for the failures of the customer were different, but he will try to convince the court that the whole reason is in you. This is where your lawyer will have to show ingenuity and care in order to understand the true causes of the customer's losses.

Freelancing is good, really. Especially those who escaped from the rattling women's team or from the head of the petty tyrant. Or those who cannot leave a sick grandmother/small child/cat at home. But there are also problems that are not customary to voice, which few people complain about ... because if you tell someone, they will laugh, I also have a problem ...

Purely women's problems ...

For example, familiar to many girls ... you cease to be a chic woman. Because you are at home. I bought an elegant dress - where to wear it? And I also want ... heels, a dress and ... where? At Pyaterochka for shopping once a week?

It's good if you have an attentive husband or boyfriend who can take you to a restaurant or cafe. And so - sit and wait for a special occasion. Which rarely comes, because out of all your friends you have only a few left. You sit at home and talk about things that are little understood by someone. Comrades are gradually weeding out ...

You stop looking after yourself with such zeal, because - that's right, you are sitting at home. Men can not shave for days, ladies can twist the "muzzle" on the back of their heads and go. This does not apply to everyone, but almost everyone has those moments when they absolutely do not care about how you look. Then, after a while, you look at yourself and groan: what am I turning into? And let's diligently engage in ourselves: fitness, swimming, massage, nails, eyebrows ... But it’s not enough for a long time - then there are a lot of orders, then it’s all the same - for whom is it all?

Friendship and fellowship...

We desperately lack communication. That is why we are eager to chat in queues, to escape at least to a fitness club - not so much for the sake of sports and health, but for the sake of communication with our own kind, lively and warm people.

It's hard to find a boyfriend/girlfriend because you live online. If you are left alone for any reason, you are desperately thinking - how to get to know someone if you practically do not communicate with people in life? Dating websites? You rarely go out for a walk, and then - either with a dog or with a child (if any). It seems that you are an interesting interlocutor, and you know a lot, but there is no way to make new acquaintances. This primarily applies to single mothers with children - there are many of them on freelance for a number of reasons.

There are no topics for conversation with old friends - but this is not only a problem in freelancing. This is a problem on a universal scale with communication between people, but we always try to close ourselves off from each other. And smartphones are not to blame. They used to hide in newspapers and books, just to hide from the rest.

Friends disappear for various reasons. For example, the threads that connected you before were gone - one job, funny booze on Fridays. And now you don't have those drinks. Because Friday as such has ceased to be an unusual day. You can work on a new project this evening - because clients, as you know, like to remember urgent matters on Friday night.

Over time, you acquire new friends and acquaintances - but mostly virtual ones. These are your colleagues, sometimes customers, sometimes just passing by, with whom you caught on in the comments on a post on a social network.

I'm tired of all…

I'm tired of the house and want to get out of here. It's always good to be at home, but it happens that you just want to leave, leave, for a day or two, to take a break from these walls. It's good that freelancing gives you the opportunity to do this at any time. But it’s not always really… admit that sometimes you can’t just pick up and go somewhere just like that, because there are a lot of orders, and it can be inconvenient to work in a new place. And not everyone has the opportunity to go to coworking - for example, in my town there is simply no such place where I can sit quietly with a laptop for half a day. It won't work in nature either - 3G catches in places, and its quality leaves much to be desired. Yes, and they won’t let you sit - the town is small, there are a lot of acquaintances, everyone comes up and looks in: “what are you doing here.” What kind of work in such conditions ...

Health…

Sits eyesight and hurts back. True, we are not ashamed to talk about this. What is there to be shy about - the work is sedentary, at the computer, like most office workers. Naturally, sooner or later, "side effects" make themselves felt. True, few people seriously struggle with them - they go for a massage or see a doctor. Again, it's a pity for time, or new interesting orders are distracting. As long as it doesn't get too hot, you can be patient...

Yes, freelancing is cool. This is freedom - when to work and with whom to work, you choose yourself. But still, most of us spend a lot of time working, promoting our brand, looking for orders. This whole routine is addictive, there is not much free time left. We do not find the strength for ourselves, we believe that it is better to invest it in something else - in training, in new orders ... We do not think about rest, about communication. And over time, we ourselves become loners. We learn to live alone, work and rest alone. And this is the main problem that is not customary to talk about: freelancing gives you the freedom to be yourself, to be free, but the price of this freedom is loneliness.

Freelancing employs 34% of all able-bodied citizens (53 million people), in Europe the share of freelancers in 2013 was 45% (8.9 million).

1. Client sets unrealistic deadlines

4. The client sent a test task that was too large

Arguments about test assignments have happened to many freelancers, especially journalists, copywriters, and translators. The scheme is always approximately the same: they send you a task, they say that you did not fit, and then you see that your work was used.

Another reason to be wary is the “series” of test tasks. The client says that he liked your work, but he is still not sure that you can handle the project, so he gives you a few more.

Distinguish test from "real" can be difficult, but remember: if this is a test, then it should be small. For example, for a translator, it should not exceed 250 words or 1800 characters with spaces.

Check with the customer in advance: “Do I understand correctly that this task will not be paid, and my work will not get to third parties and will not be published?”. Proceed only after receiving written confirmation.

5. The client does not discuss payment "ashore"

Be sure to specify in advance when the payment will arrive, in what currency and whether the client will pay extra, say, for urgency.

Of course, no one forces you to take such extreme (but, admittedly, effective) measures, but you also need to remain firm on the issue of payment.

The main thing is to always remain a professional, not to turn to aggression and rudeness. Carefully check the reviews of other contractors of the client and, if you are cooperating with him for the first time, be sure to record everything in the correspondence.

Your choice of work fell on freelancing? Are you sure that you can earn money remotely and successfully develop in this area? And you took everything into account before drawing accurate conclusions about the choice of future activities.

Just like any other job, freelancing has some disadvantages that anyone who wants to work remotely needs to be aware of.

They can be different, consider the most important of them.

Freelancers are single people

one . Usually freelancers are single people who rely solely on their own strength and in the process of doing work do not communicate with people.

Even if communication takes place, it is conducted via the Internet, which cannot fully replace real communication. Before as become a freelancer, think about whether you can work while being constantly at home and not communicating with other people, because loneliness is not suitable for everyone.

2. The second thing that potential freelancers need to consider is freedom of action. For some, this freedom of action is an advantage, but not for everyone, because. not everyone can engage in self-organization and plan their own activities.

3 . When freelancing, you will need to perform many functions at the same time. For example, work, communication with customers, distribution Money and much more. You must be prepared for an abundance of responsibilities, because it is not at all difficult to get confused in them.

4 . Constant processing of orders and showing individual respect for each customer can also be a problem for freelancers. When a high level of professionalism is achieved by a freelancer, many simply cannot communicate with clients, as with employers, and without this they can’t.

five . The last problem is the most common. A freelancer constantly has to deal with laziness on his own, which, when performing monotonous work, can manifest itself quite often.

To reduce the influence of laziness, it is necessary to organize motivation, stimulate one's activity and much more, which, again, is not available to everyone.

Despite some freelancing problems, I believe that this type of earnings is one of the best, although it is not suitable for everyone. Anyway, telework, this is a great option for organizing a workplace that can be used at any time.

I recommend visiting the following pages:

According to an Accenture study, freelancers are crowding out full-time employees around the world, but in Russia they still prefer the latter. What prevents the domestic employer from joining the main trend?

The world is rapidly moving towards the Workforce Marketplace model, that is, freelancers who sell their services on online exchanges are gradually replacing full-time employees. This is the conclusion of the consulting company Accenture in its annual report Accenture Technology Vision 2017, polling companies from 45 countries from 16 industries.

Russia is included in this report for the first time, and, apparently, Russian companies are not very ready for the trend. Only 12.4% of the total number of specialists involved in the surveyed companies are freelancers. This is the lowest figure among the 45 participating countries. For comparison, in Saudi Arabia, the leader in this indicator, 29.5% of employees are freelancers.

Completely reject the possibility of using freelancers now in 28.3% of surveyed Russian companies, and the average for all countries was 13.8%. Moreover, the readiness for changes in Russian business is low: in the next three years, only 42.5% of respondents are ready to hire freelancers, and, for example, in Norway, such 64.6%.

Why do Russian employers not trust freelancers and online specialist exchanges?

There is a freelancer, there is no result

The first experience of working with freelancers for the founder and head of the sensor kiosk manufacturer Zorgtekh, Maxim Pulov, was extremely unsuccessful. A few years ago, he worked on a major IT contract for the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. At one stage, a software developer was needed, and Pulov decided to hire a freelancer. He chose, as it seemed to him, a worthy specialist - it was an ex-Microsoft employee with good recommendations. Everything was going great, but three days before the project was due, the freelancer suddenly stopped communicating. “He had the source codes, we couldn’t turn in the work,” Poolov still recalls this situation with a shudder. He found the address of the ill-fated employee and went to his house in the middle of the night. On the spot, it turned out that after leaving Microsoft, the developer took several projects at once, but did not cope - he worked without sleep for a week, until a nervous breakdown occurred. Somehow the project was brought to mind, but since then Poolov no longer entrusts serious work to freelancers.

The optionality of freelancers is a problem typical of Russia. In 2016, IT operator Inoventica was forced to stop creating commercials for its products. The reason is the disruption of work by a freelancer. His tasks included creating the story, preparing the script and shooting the video. “As a result, all the deadlines were missed, we came up with the script ourselves,” says Ekaterina Khrobostova, a representative of the company. “We don’t freelance projects that are business-critical.”

Co-owner of the beer restaurant "0.33" Alexander Endovin for the first time hired a freelancer to promote the institution in social network"VKontakte" - he wanted to increase the number of subscribers of the group from 200 to 2 thousand people. “But instead of creating their own content, the freelancer simply copied my posts from Facebook and posted them on VKontakte. After some time, we broke up, terribly dissatisfied with each other, the group never grew up, ”recalls Endovin.

Broken deadlines, “going into the astral plane” and outright hack work are typical claims of entrepreneurs to third-party employees. Neither strong resumes, nor recommendations from previous customers, nor constant monitoring can save you - the employees involved work carelessly or disappear altogether. What to do with it?

When freelancers are useful

According to the Accenture study, 26.4% Russian companies considers freelancers only as a temporary resource to meet short-term needs.

According to Nikolai Goslavsky, General Director of the Initsium company (a manufacturer of interactive kiosks and a developer of software for their production), a freelancer can only be entrusted with performing standard and preferably not the most urgent tasks - website design with a simple architecture, video filming or technical installation. He came to this conclusion after the experience of unsuccessful cooperation with freelancers.

A few years ago, Initsium decided to bring in third-party 3D modelers. It was necessary to design the touch terminal taking into account a number of conditions (for example, the type of material). But the result disappointed the company: not a single external specialist could offer an acceptable option. “A person from the outside will never do better than a specialist from the team who knows all the subtleties and features of the project,” Goslavsky is convinced. “Understanding the specifics of complex IT products for new employees does not come immediately, but only in the course of daily work.”

Sergey Kozlov agrees with him, CEO of Megaplan (the developer of the CRM system): “The Workforce Marketplace model works well only when it comes to hiring low-skilled personnel performing standardized tasks. Good IT-developers are highly paid and highly qualified personnel, which still needs to be looked for in the market. There are few such employees, and they are worth their weight in gold.”

The main reason for using freelancers is savings, representatives of 35.8% of Russian companies say this, according to an Accenture study. “This model works when it is too costly to hire specialists with narrow profile qualifications. And on attracting them as freelancers in our Aktivo project, we save 50-70%, ”calculated the founder of the KupiVIP, CarPrice and CarFix projects Oskar Hartmann.

Most freelancers are sole proprietors on a “simplified” basis, they pay 6% of turnover, and not 13% income tax, like full-time employees. They do not need to make contributions to social funds. “A nice bonus is the minimization of equipment and rental costs. Savings can be estimated at several tens of thousands of rubles per month per employee,” says Alexander Krol, founder of the Checkboxes.ru marketing company.

And most importantly, the “risk of underloading” is reduced - if you take people on the staff, then they need to be paid a salary regardless of whether there is work for them at the moment or not, and outside specialists, as a rule, are paid for a specific result. “With freelancers, this risk is much less: people gathered, made a project and fled,” emphasizes Elena Kushelevich, managing director of Accenture Strategy Russia, Accenture’s division responsible for building client strategies.

At the same time, not only the demand for freelancing is growing, but also its supply - and this is another global trend, according to Accenture. “Many employees today tend to strike a hard balance between personal life, free time and work schedule. When choosing a job, young people often take into account even the time of the year when the project is being implemented, says Kushelevich. — Specialists in freelance mode often work better than in the state big company: they have more energy and desire to succeed in the project, because they themselves chose it and manage their own time.

Emotions under control

“Freelancers are not a magic pill at all, their use requires developed skills from ourselves. A very important role is played by the quality of hiring, the development of functionality, a clear understanding of the role of an employee,” says Alexander Krol. Having burned themselves on the first experiments, businessmen usually do not refuse freelancers at all, but build more effective schemes of interaction with remote employees.

For example, Maxim Pulov from the Zorgtech company discusses every aspect of the project with freelancers from the very beginning and tries to be on the same wavelength with the future employee. The payment scheme is also necessarily negotiated - the freelancer himself names the deadlines for the completion of the work, coordinates them with Pulov, and the payment is calculated from the cost of one man-hour. In fact, the freelancer sets his own fee and deadline, and this works better than assigning them to the client. “Cooperation with freelancers takes a lot of emotions, but it is not only cost-effective, but often very effective,” said Poolov. “If you build the work correctly, there will be no failures.”

Denis Shokhalevich from promotion agency mobile applications Qmobi often hires freelancers as developers, designers, media buyers. The main problem comes from poor communications, he confirms: “Typically, freelancers can't communicate quickly with colleagues, so they lose a lot of information. And correspondence with them in Skype or other messengers sometimes leads to misunderstanding. You need to talk to your freelancers as often as possible in person.”

There are even special IT solutions to control remote employees. For example, the founder of the Fasten transportation ordering service (works not only in Russia, but also in the USA), Evgeny Lvov, developed a system for online control of the emotional state of freelancers working as call center operators. “The system analyzes the tempo and timbre of the voice, facial expression, vocabulary and sends a report online to the shift supervisor. The operator himself sees them: if the indicators are worse than required, the employee is obliged to correct them, ”says Lvov. People do not always adequately assess their emotional state, they begin to be rude, for example, without noticing it themselves, and this IT system helps to control emotions.

In general, the “uberization” of the economy is an excellent stimulation for the practice of hiring freelancers, according to Accenture. Online services like Fasten, which are now rapidly developing in the taxi, transportation, courier delivery, are the main drivers of the freelance market development. Such companies are built on self-employed employees who are not registered in the state. But it is very important for such companies to understand their client. “The speed with which businesses need to respond to change needs to be much faster than before,” Kuschelevich says.

"Smart" exchanges

Smart online exchanges will increase the efficiency of freelancers labor resources, forecast in Accenture.

Already today, complex mathematical models are being developed for such exchanges, designed to select freelancers for certain projects according to the maximum number parameters important for the employer. “The near future of online exchanges is a fully automated tool using artificial intelligence,” says Elena Kushelevich. “The more often an employer uses her services, the faster and better she will select candidates, suggesting exactly the people who are needed, and uploading a huge amount of confirmed information about them. All this will happen automatically, the main thing is to generate a request.”

The most popular online exchange in the world right now is Upwork; hundreds of thousands of specialists of all possible profiles and qualifications are registered on it. There are others - Freelancer, Gigster, Zhubajie. They are already quite heavily automated, unlike similar Russian projects - Internet employers Workle, YouDo, Freelance.ru. Judging by customer reviews, as a rule, low-skilled specialists are looking for part-time jobs on domestic resources, and star employees use word of mouth.

Perhaps that is why Russian business demonstrates low willingness to use online exchanges to attract independent employees: 28.3% of domestic employers do not use online exchanges at all (against an average figure for other countries of 13%), calculated in Accenture. This is the highest rate among the countries surveyed. As a supplier work force for large projects, such exchanges are considered by 17.9% of Russian companies. In this sense, the country is significantly behind the leaders - Austria (38.8%), Switzerland (30.5%), Great Britain (22.5%). As the automation of exchanges grows, the demand for searching and hiring freelancers through them will inevitably grow, Elena Kushelevich is sure.

According to Accenture's calculations, a qualitative transition of global business to the Workforce Marketplace model will take place in the coming years. If now in the United States in the total volume of working specialists freelancers are 15.5%, then by 2020 their number may exceed 40%. ​Consultants do not give forecasts for Russia yet.