Ask HN: Under quoted, late, no contract unpaid project

Find all the emails between you and your client that happened up until you sent the quote to the client. Put any requirements from those emails into your scoping document. That is what you work towards. Send this to the client to sign off on.

Gather any requirements asked for since and put that in a new scoping requirement for releases 2, 3 and 4 if need be. Send these to the client to sign off on.

Explain to the client that you are happy to deliver what is being asked for, but you will need payment on delivery of the first release, and each release after. If you have to split the $10k up over different releases, do so, but explain to them that as the scope of the project has evolved you will have to charge for the extra work that has fallen outside of the original project.

All that said, if you are skipping actual paying work to try and get this to work, you are missing out twice. You have already sunk a lot of time into the project for potentially nothing. Don't skip your baths on the chance that it rains.

Don't obsess about the time you spent on it. It is a sunk cost; try not to let it bias you against the best course moving forward. Instead you might consider:

1) How much deposit did they make? Can you afford to walk away and return this amount?

2) What is the best case scenario if you proceed? $10k is a lot (although not that much if this is a 250-hour project) but are they likely to pay it? Without a contract?

3) What is the worst case scenario if you stop the project? Are you incorporated, in case this comes to legal action? Feel free to ask a lawyer for a free consultation to find out more.

Don't feel like a dick charging for every single little feature. An hourly rate guarantees fairness. If the feature only takes ten minutes to add, great, they're only paying ten minutes of cash. If the feature takes longer, you deserve to be paid for that too.

Don't try to convince your self you can fix the project. Faster you get away the faster you can get new clients that you will be able to manage better.

Also don't panic: everyone learns the hard way to manage clients :)

Let them know that because you are a freelancer, you have other contracts too, so that will be a factor in determining how much time it will take to deliver for them. It's reasonable to say that not having any of the project fee will mean you need to have more parallel projects to pay the bills, and you might see if you can get some amount for work delivered so you can scale off other contracts and dedicate more time to them.

For this project, the blame is entirely on yourself. That is not meant to be harsh. No contract, you were not clear on what you were doing but took the job and did not set expectations correctly. This is a learning experience - communicate where you are with the project to the client on a regular basis from now on.

Figure out how much time it will take you to finish, and your effective hourly rate to get the remaining $10k. If it's a reasonable hourly rate, go ahead and finish. Otherwise, walk away.

Also, that's why it's better to work hourly rather than fixed-price. That way you avoid arguments when the client increases the scope.

You don't need to always have an airtight contract. What I do is make a limit on how much I'm willing to risk, and once that limit is reached I stop working until I get paid.

Sounds like things are getting out of control with this project as far as scope and payments.

I would setup a scope of work in phases for what you quoted initially. Note what is completed. Then setup a reasonable time frame to complete the remaining items along with incremental payments and an initial payment to cover some of the work you completed above the initial deposit.

Be careful with this as far as when you can complete it and how much payment you expect. If things are way more work than they should have been now is the time to ask for extra time/money. And if you can pad your schedule some I would do that as well so you meet all the remaining deadlines to keep them happy and paying.

This will document that you have far exceeded what they have paid for so far . . . in their initial payment.

Once you have this, contact them and let them know you are committed to completing the project this is the time frame and payment schedule you are proposing to make it happen.

If they balk at doing this I would indicate you will send them an invoice for the work completed beyond their initial payment and you'll be happy to provide their next developer with a summary of the status of the project to get them up and running.

Follow up and send them an invoice for the % of work completed. Best case they pay this . . . but this is mainly to allow them to screw you by not paying this invoice and not think about trying to ask for their initial deposit back.

They might not be as mad as you think and just want a cost/time frame for their project so if the scope is out of line you could even propose more fee. To cover items they have added or if the existing app was in bad shape.

You should probably weigh if you'd be happy getting away from this project with just their initial deposit. If so you might want to try to go the invoice for % complete route and move on to other projects.

Good luck.