Web designer and developer Stephen Fairbanks has created Crumbs, an open source holding page that aims to "gently remind" late-paying clients to clear their invoices. Fairbanks told .net that after a year and a half freelancing, he's had to deal with a disappointingly large number of clients who drum up all sorts of excuses regarding payment: "They say they're waiting for their client to pay them, or blame the finance manager – anything to avoid them having to pay on time. Usually, clients eventually get sick of the emails and phone calls and cough up the money they owe, but being a freelancer I have to wonder, what if they just decided not to pay? What would I do?"
Reasoning that some clients are on the other side of the world and that solicitors are beyond the budget of many freelancers, Fairbanks created what he considered a generic but polite holding page that could be used as a last-ditch attempt, to get a client to uphold their side of the agreement. "I would only recommend it after you've exhausted all other possibilities of getting the client to acknowledge their shortcomings – emails, invoice reminders, phone calls, Twitter mentions, sending them moody Instagram snaps of your empty food cupboards, etc.," affirmed Fairbanks. "But Crumbs is designed to be friendly enough to not anger the client/site visitors too much, but then if a freelancer has reached this point, they would be crazy to want to work for that client again anyway."
