MT Independent Contractors

So, as an independent contractor (IC) you have a couple of options. You can decide to either work directly with the providers for whom you transcribe as an independent contractor as direct clients or you can choose to work for a transcription service in the capacity of a subcontractor (SC). Either way, YOU are your OWN business.

As an IC it is not your client's responsibility to ensure you bill them on time or that they ever even receive your invoice, and as an SC it is not the responsibility of the transcription service owner to contact you looking for same.

In either position it is also up to you to determine if you are invoicing your client, be it a provider or a service, appropriately. This means that it is not up to them to contact you and tell you that you shortchanged yourself on your invoice by omitting a job or a typo in your line count numbers that shorts you a couple hundred lines.

You should also have a basic understanding of what an invoice number is and apply it to your own invoicing system. When you contact the person in charge of seeing to it that you are paid, it is much easier for them to locate the invoice in question this way. Invoice numbers can look like this: 3100-09, 3101-09, 3102-09. The -09 referring to the year. The first half of the invoice number being a customer number assigned by you that compounds by 1 with each invoice created. The client assigns you a vendor number in their system that records your invoice numbers and amounts accordingly in chronological order. The first invoice next year, if 3102-09 had been the last in 2009, would be 3103-10. Now when you call this person, you can reference an easy-to-note reference number instead of saying or typing, "My invoice for period May 1, 2009 through May 15, 2009." or "05/01/09-05/15/09," or worse yet, "the one for $635.00." It also makes for easy entering into their payment system, whatever that system may be.

For those needing clarification, if you are a subcontractor, the transcription service for which you provide services is your client.