Story: Work beyond the border

Since I’ve started freelance work, I always have to discuss money to the client and make an estimate. It’s still uncomfortable for me. Normally, I work for local people, but currently, I sometimes work with the United States customer. However, I have some problems with a transaction.

Basically, the designer asks a service fee upfront. Rates are usually 50%(or 25% sometimes). If it’s in Canada, we have many options to pay the fee, sending a check, credit card and e-Transfer(bank). However, these ways didn’t work on this project. Therefore, I searched for a solution on Google. I should remove this stress from the customer. If this is an e-commerce business, it quite a big issue. I miss a business opportunity for it. I seriously understand.

You may work globally as a freelance designer. I would like to share my experience.

Facing the problem

First of all, I concern about the convenience fee.

A convenience fee is a fee assessed by a payee when a consumer pays with an electronic payment card rather than by cash, check or Automated Clearing House (ACH) transfer. Convenience fees can be a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the transaction amount (usually 2% to 3%) and must be disclosed to the consumer in advance. Types of payments where the payee typically charges a convenience fee include mortgage payments, property tax payments, college tuition and taxes. – Investopedia

Before you make an invoice, you have to mention it in advance. Customer accepted to charge the convenience fee in the project. It costs around 3% in total.

I am using online accounting software, Wave Financial. It’s no problem. I could send an invoice from the account(or by email with PDF). Customer can pay the fee by credit card or bank account. In this case, a customer asked me payment through QuickBooks. That’s why I stacked. I don’t use QuickBooks before. In addition, I don’t know I can charge to client’s credit card manually without credit card information.

Online accounting services

I’ve started freelance work in May 2016. The first year, I made an invoice by Ai. It took time and inefficient. Therefore, I looked for an online service. I found 2 major services, Wave Financial and QuickBooks. I chose Wave. Because it’s not subscription service compare to QuickBooks. Now I realized a lot of people/company use QuickBooks, but I still don’t know what benefits are.

Wave Financial

Wave is a company that provides a suite of financial services and online software for small businesses. Wave is headquartered in the Leslieville neighborhood in Toronto, Canada. The company manages more than $244 billion in income and expense transactions for its customers, including $16 billion in annual invoicing. – Wikipedia

QuickBooks

QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as cloud-based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions. – Wikipedia

Alternative services

Many of you might come up with other payment services. Me too. I also asked an idea to my friend for confirming commonness. He mentions ideas which I had.

Paypal

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites, and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee in exchange for benefits such as one-click transactions and password memory. PayPal’s payment system, also called PayPal, is considered a type of payment rail. – Wikipedia

Square

MSquare, Inc. is a financial services, merchant services aggregator, and mobile payment company based in San Francisco, California. The company markets several software and hardware payments products and has expanded into small business services. The company was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and launched its first app and service in 2010. It has been traded as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange since November 2015 with the ticker symbol SQ. – Wikipedia

Transferwise

TransferWise is a UK-based money transfer service launched in January 2011 by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus with headquarters in London and offices in a number of cities including Tallinn, New York and Singapore. The company supports more than 750 currency routes across the world including GBP, USD, EUR, AUD and CAD, and provides multi-currency accounts. In 2018 TransferWise’s net profit reached $8 million and its customer-base reached 4 million, who collectively transfer around $4 billion per month. – Wikipedia

Cardpay Solutions

Cardpay Solutions has over a decade of experience in the merchant processing industry. We specialize in providing e-commerce solutions to both traditional merchants and high-risk merchants that have trouble obtaining traditional merchant services.

Whether opening a new business or expanding an established one, we provide flexible and reliable products and services that enable merchants to accept all types of electronic payments. – Cardpay Solutions

*I tried to create an account, but I couldn’t. Because in the process, the site asked me an address. It showed only states of America. No states of Canada. The empty box got an error.

Direct contacts by Upwork

In 2022, I use direct contacts by Upwork for US customers. It has a transaction fee, but Upwork becomes the third party between the client and me. It helps me to avoid fake clients.

Conclusion

This is a good experience for me to set up a process. I understand every freelancer has to take this path. We, as a designer, shouldn’t spend time on it. Improve the efficiency and productivity of each project. Set up the core system. Then, apply it to every situation.

In any case, I am going to explain about payment upfront(50% of the amount) by check, credit card or Paypal/Square. I don’t want to make a temporary account even it’s free. I learned it during the project.

If you know any resources, please let me know. 

Reference:

CRA: Charging a service fee or a “convenience fee”
The Ballance: Businesses and Credit Card Convenience Fees
RBC: Six Ways for Canadians to Pay U.S. Bills When in Canada