Originally written by Charlie Bavington on August 25, 2009 12:08 PM it might be worthwhile reviewing your policy on these matters

I do agree with Charlie. In general the initial post of this thread looks weird: it seems Amy has found herself into something she has no even a slightest idea of...

NK

Thank you, everyone, for your ideas. I cleared up the issue with the German agency. Their address was on the original email, and I can read a little German, and the stated fee was understood to be in hundredths, as you said, Maxi.  Yes, I spent far too much time on it. 

The final fee was reasonable, if not a little high - 125 E which will be considerably more in Canadian dollars. However, 'the cheque is in the mail' as they say !

 Thanks again, Amy

Originally written by Amy Parker on August 25, 2009 11:51 AM The final fee was reasonable, if not a little high - 125 E which will be considerably more in Canadian dollars.   Thanks again, Amy

That is, once your bank has deducted its fees from the amount of the cheque...

You are so right.

 Bank fees could be as much as 80$ Canadian by the time the banks have finished their banking. I am sending my personal account details (numbers, etc) by slow mail for confidentiality reasons.

 I would have preferred a cheque in order to avoid the huge fees, however that is not their choice. 

 Thank you for your interest and concern. I have felt better about this international internet site since receiving the replies from the Cafe. I think I made some sense of it (no pun intended).   

Originally written by Amy Parker on August 26, 2009 9:52 AM I would have preferred a cheque in order to avoid the huge fees, however that is not their choice.

The only way to avoid fees would be to have the client send you a money order in Canadian dollars drawn on a Canadian bank. If they were to send you a regular cheque in euro (if such a thing even exists in Germany, where bank-to-bank transfers are the norm), your Canadian bank would charge a hefty fee to negotiate it and would place the funds on hold for 15-30 business days while doing so. At least with a wire transfer, the money should be available as soon as it hits your account.

In the future, you should ask your clients to instruct their bank to use "Charging Option OUR" when sending you a wire transfer through the SWIFT system. That way, the fees levied by any intermediary banks should be charged back to the client rather than deducted from the principal amount, so you should only have to pay your own bank's incoming wire fee (usually around $15).

In my terms of payment, I state that any bank fees deducted will be added to a future invoice.

I'm new in doing translations online only. Can you advise me with regards of invoices? I mean, what are the procedures? How do I generate the invoice and how soon once the job is done should I send the invoice? Thanks a lot!

Betina Johnson

Hi Bettina and welcome to TC,

I have moved your question to the general thread about Invoices, which I have also made sticky in the Jobs, Outsourcers and Payment forum as this seems to be a recurrent discussion.

Pending further replies, you may want to read the previous postings in this thread.

TC Forum Admin