You’ve launched your voice-over business. You market your demos, network, audition, and get gigs. Now, all you have to do is get paid. What’s the best way for getting paid for voice over? Union or Non-Union?
For SAG/AFTRA union talent, a benefit of union membership is payment in a timely fashion. It’s built into the union contract. Union talents fill out a form at the session and then submit it to a paymaster (someone contracted with the union to handle talent payroll). Under the union contract, the paymaster pays you within a specified time period.
Getting paid for voice over as a non-union and financial core talent means you collect payments owed to you. Financial core, if you aren’t familiar with the term, refers to less than full union membership. Financial core union members have paid the portion of dues and fees dedicated strictly to collective bargaining, excluding any activity not directly related to collective bargaining. You might call it “union lite.” Financial core members do not have voting rights and cannot hold elective office in the union, but they also do not have to abide by union rules and regulations.
Types of Clients
Most businesses base their payment policies on assessment of risk. Assessing the risk you take with a client usually is a matter of simple common sense. If an individual contacts you through your web site and asks you to narrate a wedding video or tribute to a deceased relative, then probably it would be wise to request payment up front before delivering the voice over. If the individual balks at paying up front, then agree to voice the script, play the voice-over down the phone line to prove you did it, get paid, and then deliver the voiceover.
Working with ad agencies and production houses usually means giving up a little control of payment terms. You can request payment up front but most ad agencies and production houses expect an invoice. When you put “due on receipt” on the invoice, recipients often interpret is as “30 days net.” There are some excellent ad agencies and production houses out there that pay promptly, but very often you will have to wait 30 days or more for payment. Note: many smaller ad agencies and production houses will not pay you until they get paid. In the ad biz, this means you can wait a long time for getting paid for voice over.
If No Cash, Barter Works
On a personal note, after waiting a year for payment from a small agency for a VO I’d done for a local electronics and appliance retailer, I finally reached an agreement to accept a color television in lieu of cash. A couple of months later, the retailer went out of business, a victim of serious negative cash flow! Did the ad agency ever get paid? Good question.
Doing voice work directly for mid-sized to large corporations usually means having to bill on a 30-day net basis. This means, in essence, you give the client 30 days credit interest-free, but you don’t take much risk doing this. Will some companies push payment out 60 days and even further? Yes, but eventually they will pay you.
Payment Options
So, let’s go through the individual types of clients and your voice over payment options.
For individuals, request immediate payment. As described above, play the completed voiceover down the phone to prove you did it and then ask for payment. When you get the payment, then deliver the voice over.
For direct work with larger companies, ad agencies, and production houses, request immediate payment upon receipt of invoice. If they say their policy is 30 days, try for 15. For long-form voiceovers involving many pages and a large talent fee, try requesting 50 percent up front and 50 percent upon delivery of the project. Remember everything is negotiable. You can even barter for part of your fee. Remember how I received a TV in lieu of cash? Of course, keep track of your receivables.. When a client does not pay by the due date, send a statement. Make a polite but firm phone call requesting payment. Be proactive. Most people pay their bills. But for many clients your invoice will not be top of the pile, so to speak.
Online Payment
PayPal is a very popular site for collecting or sending payments. It’s pretty much the de facto payment service for many online businesses. Just visit PayPal and sign up. Clients can pay by credit card or through electronic transfer from a checking account. You’ll receive an email telling you when the transfer of funds has occurred. This makes it perfect for collecting an up front payment. As soon as you receive the email, you can deliver the voiceover. There are many other online payment processors you can check out, too, like Square and Stripe. Just do a search for online payment services for a complete list.
Want to take credit cards? You can do that through PayPal’s “Create an Invoice,” or you can place PayPal buttons on your site clients can use to pay via PayPal, or credit or debit card. You can also open a merchant account in order to take plastic. It will cost you a fee to open the account, a monthly fee, a fee for each transaction, and a percentage of each sale. Do an online search for credit card merchant accounts and compare costs and services to get the best deal. Using PayPal as your “merchant account” costs about the same as a merchant account by the way.
Wire Transfer
Direct wire transfer is a third electronic payment option. Wire transfers are very popular in Europe. Set up a checking account used exclusively for wire transfers. Supply the client with your checking account number and the banks routing number, and the client transfers funds directly from his account to yours. It works well and can cost virtually nothing depending on the deal on the account you get from your bank. One of my TV imaging clients pays by wire transfer. I email an invoice out of my QuickBooks and usually the next day the money is in my account!
To gain greater control over how and when you get paid, put a payment policy in place. Hey, it might be a really fun business, but it’s no fun not getting paid.
Happy collecting!
© Peter Drew, 2021
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