Your first 90 days with a new business client

The first 90 days are the real trial

Winning regular work from a business feels like the finish line, but the client hasn't really chosen you yet. They've agreed to try you, and over the next three months they'll decide whether you become the supplier they ring without thinking or the one they replace at the first slip. Most of that decision rests on unglamorous things like paperwork that arrives on time, invoices they can pay without a query, and how you handle the first thing that goes wrong. Our guide to your first meeting with a business client covers winning the work, and this one starts the day after.

Week one: the supplier paperwork

Larger clients will send a supplier form or a link to a supplier portal before they can pay you. Fill it in the day it arrives, because nothing gets paid until it's done and a half-finished form is a common reason a first invoice sits for weeks. Expect to give your ABN, bank details, insurance certificates, licence numbers and sometimes your safety documents. What clients ask for on the insurance side is in insurance and licences business clients ask for.

Make sure your ABN is on every quote and invoice. The ATO says a business paying a supplier must withhold 47% of the payment unless it has an invoice or another document quoting the supplier's ABN, so a first invoice without it can arrive with nearly half the money held back and sent to the tax office.

Give your bank details in a way the client can check. The Australian Cyber Security Centre warns that criminals impersonate suppliers to get businesses to change payment details, sometimes from the supplier's own hacked email account, and it advises verifying unusual requests through a known phone number. Put your details on the supplier form or in their portal, tell your contact you'll never change them by email alone, and turn on multi-factor authentication for your own email. If a client's payment goes to someone pretending to be you, it's a terrible start even when it isn't your fault.

While the forms are going back and forth, get the answers you'll need to run the work and write them down:

• Who is your day-to-day contact, and who covers when they're away?
• Does each job need a purchase order, and which number goes on the invoice?
• Where do invoices go, and who in accounts can you ring about one?
• What are the site rules for access, keys, alarms, parking, hours and inductions?
• How do they want to hear about problems: a call, an email or their maintenance system?

The first job

Treat the first job as the one the client will judge the whole arrangement by, because they will. Do exactly what the scope says, and if you find something outside it, tell your contact and ask before you touch it. Take photos before and after, and send a short note the same day saying what was done, anything you noticed and when you'll be back. A commercial cleaner in Ipswich might send three lines and four photos after the first night, and a message like that often gets forwarded to whoever signed off on hiring them.

Keep a sheet for each site with the access details, contacts, quirks and anything the client has asked you to avoid. When someone else from your team has to go, the client shouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Getting paid

Send the first invoice exactly the way the client asked for it, with the purchase order, site name and contact they gave you, to the address they named. Put the due date in your diary and check your account the day after. If the money isn't there, ring accounts and ask politely whether the invoice is in their system. A late first invoice is usually stuck on a missing detail, and you want to find that out in week five rather than week ten.

Big clients often pay on longer terms than you'd set yourself. Under the federal Payment Times Reporting Scheme, businesses with annual revenue of $100 million or more report every six months on their standard payment terms and how long they actually take to pay small business suppliers. The reports sit on a free public register, so look your client up before you plan your cash flow around their terms. If you think a large business is treating small suppliers badly on payment times, the regulator directs complaints to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.

Construction work in Queensland and NSW

If what you do counts as construction work, each state's security of payment law gives you a right to progress payments and sets deadlines for paying you. Those deadlines are set out in our guide to quoting for commercial work. What matters in the first 90 days is setting up your invoicing so you could use the law if you ever needed to.

In Queensland, the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 says a payment claim is a written document that identifies the work, states the amount claimed and requests payment, and a document marked "invoice" counts as the request. Apart from a final claim, it has to be given within the longer of the period in your contract or six months after the work it covers was last carried out, so don't leave work unbilled. If the client's payment schedule offers less than you claimed, you have 30 business days after receiving it to apply for adjudication. If they don't pay the amount in their own schedule, you have 20 business days after the due date.

In NSW, Building Commission NSW says a payment claim under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 must be in writing, state the amount due and describe the construction work. A subcontractor whose contract is connected with a residential construction contract must also say on the claim that it's made under the Act. The adjudication windows are tighter than Queensland's: 10 business days after you receive a payment schedule you disagree with, or 20 business days after the due date if you accepted the schedule and still weren't paid.

Deadlines that short are easy to miss, so keep a simple log from the first job with the date each claim went out, the date it was received, any schedule that came back and the date the money arrived. Whether your trade counts as construction work depends on each Act's definitions. Queensland's, for example, only covers cleaning carried out in the course of construction, repair or maintenance work. Get advice before you rely on either Act for a large amount.

Communication and reporting

Agree early how often you'll report and in what form, then stick to it. For regular work a short monthly summary is usually enough, covering what was done, anything you found and anything coming up that needs a decision. Write it so your contact can forward it without editing, because a property manager passes updates to owners and a strata manager reports to a committee. A landscaper looking after a body corporate's grounds might report the month's visits, a dying tree near the driveway that needs a quote, and the date the irrigation will be checked before summer.

Report problems before they're found. If someone is sick and the Tuesday clean has to move to Wednesday, tell the client on Monday. A change they hear about from you is forgiven far more easily than one they discover.

The first complaint

Something will go wrong in the first three months, and how you handle it matters more than the mistake. Reply the same day, go and look if you can, and fix it before you explain it. Then tell the client in writing what happened, what you've done and what will change so it doesn't happen again. Leave any argument about scope until after it's fixed, and if it genuinely wasn't in scope, say so politely and offer to price it.

The law is usually on the client's side here. Under the Australian Consumer Law the consumer guarantees cover services that cost less than $100,000, even when the buyer is a business. As business.gov.au puts it, those services must be carried out with due care and skill, be fit for the purpose stated and be supplied in a reasonable time if no timeframe was agreed. So fixing poor work isn't a favour, and offering to fix it before you're asked is what earns you the next job.

The 90-day review, and the next site

Around the three-month mark, ask your contact for fifteen minutes to look back. Bring your log of jobs, any problems and how they were fixed, and one or two suggestions, such as a change to the schedule that would save them money, and ask what they'd change. If your contract has a price review, remind them when it falls so it doesn't come as a surprise later.

Then ask about the rest of their work. A property manager at a busy agency sits next to colleagues with their own rentals, a facilities manager may look after other buildings, and a builder has other jobs starting. Ask who else might need what you do and whether your contact would introduce you, because a word from a colleague who's happy with you is the easiest new work you'll ever win. Ask too whether they'd be a reference, and agree what you're allowed to say about the work.

From there it's a matter of keeping up whatever got you the second site, and keeping referrals coming covers that side. Our pages on property managers and facilities managers go through how each picks and keeps its suppliers.