Delivering files to a client without WeTransfer

WeTransfer is fine for sending a file. The problem is not the sending: it is what happens afterwards.

Six months after the job, the client writes to you. "Could you send me the files again?" The link has expired, they cannot find the email, and you spend twenty minutes hunting for a folder on an external drive for a job that was paid for long ago.

It happens to everybody, several times a year, and it is billable nowhere.

The four problems with an expiring link

It expires. Seven days. That is very short for a client who goes on holiday, and very short for a file that will need digging out in a year.

It does not say what it contains. An archive called final_delivery_v3.zip says nothing about which job it belongs to, what changed since v2, or what the client is supposed to do with it.

It lives in an inbox. Which is to say nowhere. It is under one conversation, itself under forty others, belonging to somebody who may have left the company since.

It goes out before the payment. This is the expensive one. Once the archive is downloaded, your invoice has nothing but a moral argument behind it. Making the opening depend on the payment settles the question before it is asked.

What a delivery has to contain

A delivery is not an archive. It is a small set of things, each of which is there for a reason.

• The usable files, in the agreed formats, named so that somebody who did not work on them can read them.
• The links, for when what you deliver is not a file. A site address, a gallery, a shared folder, access to a back office. Half the trades deliver that and nothing else.
• A sentence saying what it is. Three lines is enough: what is in it, what changed since last time, what the client should do next.
• Somewhere that does not move. The same address they already had, where they filled in the brief and followed the progress.

That last point is the only one that genuinely solves the message six months later.

Conditional, or not

A delivery can wait for two things.

Your green light. You put it all together calmly, you check it, and you open it when it is ready. That is the normal case, and it is also what stops an intermediate version going out by mistake.

The payment. The client sees it is ready, pays, and collects a second later. It is the most effective chasing system there is, and the only one that never requires writing an unpleasant message.

The second is no harsher than the first. It is simply explicit: instead of "delivery on receipt of payment" in an email nobody rereads, the page says so itself, at the moment the client is looking at it.

What matters to your clients, and gets forgotten

A client does not judge a delivery on download speed. They judge it on two things: do they understand what they have just received, and will they be able to find it again.

Which is why a delivery done well shows. It is in your name, it is at the same address as the rest of the job, it explains what it holds, and it is still there in a year.

What Kalepio does with it

The delivery is attached to the job, at the same address as the brief and the conversation. It carries files, links, or both, with a note explaining them. It opens on your green light or on payment, and you choose which, job by job.

And it does not expire: the client keeps the same link, before, during and after.

For the part that comes before, the one that decides what you will be delivering: what to ask, trade by trade, and what order to ask for the money in.

Frequently asked questions

How do you send large files to a client?

Any transfer service works for the sending. The problem is what follows: a link that expires after seven days is no use on the day the client asks for the files again, which happens several times a year.

Should you deliver before or after payment?

Show before, hand over after. The client sees the delivery is ready, pays, and collects a second later. It is the only chasing system that never requires writing an unpleasant message.

What should a delivery contain?

The usable files in the agreed formats, the links for when what you deliver is not a file, a sentence saying what is in it and what changed, and an address that does not move.

How do you find a delivery again months later?

By keeping it in the same place as the rest of the job rather than in an inbox. A transfer link lives under one conversation, itself under forty others, belonging to somebody who may have left the company.