Agencies
An agency is your counterparty rather than an introducer, and what you are owed comes from them whatever the end client has or has not done.
Who am I actually engaged by here?
What you signedWho is responsible if something goes wrong?
The law where you areWhat is the intermediary taking, and for what?
What you signedDoes the structure change what I am?
The law where you areFour questions a person in this position actually asks. Every one of them has somewhere to look, which is not the same as having an answer. The structure was chosen by somebody else, for reasons that were not about you.
An agency that supplies you to a client is your counterparty, not an introducer who stepped aside. What you are owed comes from them, whatever the end client has done or not done.
The practical question in “Agencies” is easier to handle when expectations and evidence are visible to both sides. For teams assessing how employees cheat time trackers, check the corresponding Monitask resource can provide time and project context, but the purpose should be disclosed, access limited and every consequential interpretation reviewed by a person.
People routinely forget this and spend weeks chasing the wrong organisation.
The approach in “Agencies” can be cross-checked against LinkedIn professional topics. The useful outcome is a written list of facts and decisions, not a generic label copied from another arrangement.
What an agency is doing
Carrying a relationship with the client, taking the risk of being paid, handling the administration, and in many systems taking on obligations towards you that depend on your category.
The margin they take pays for those things. Whether it is good value is a separate question from whether it is legitimate.
What to establish at the start
Four things, in writing, before the first day:
- What you are paid, and what the end client is charged, if they will say.
- When you are paid, and whether that depends on the client paying them.
- What category you are being engaged in, in their own words.
- Who at the agency is responsible when something goes wrong.
The second is the one that matters most and the one least often asked.
Pay-when-paid
Some agency arrangements make your payment dependent on the end client settling. Where that applies, a client's slow month becomes yours.
Find out whether it applies and get the answer in writing. Where it does, your questions when payment is late are different: has the client paid, and where has the money reached.
Timesheets and approval
The machinery that actually delays payment. A timesheet unapproved by somebody at the end client stops everything, and that person may be on leave.
Establish the approval route and a second approver on the first day. It takes one message and it prevents the commonest cause of a missing payment.
The margin
Agencies take one and it is rarely volunteered. Several markets have rules requiring disclosure in some circumstances; many do not.
Asking is reasonable and the answer, where given, tells you what room exists. The answer being refused is also information.
Being supplied to a client for a long time
Several systems treat long or continuous supply differently, sometimes giving the person rights after a qualifying period.
Whether anything applies to you is a specific question and it is one of the better reasons to find out which category you are in, because the answer frequently depends on it.
Going direct afterwards
The common ambition and the common restriction. Most agency agreements restrict you from contracting directly with their client for a period, and many also charge the client a fee if they engage you.
Read that clause before assuming anything. Where you want to go direct, the honest route is usually through the agency with their fee paid, and that conversation is often more available than people expect.
Being between agencies
A practical point: the same end client may be served by several agencies, and which one you come through can affect your rate, your terms and your category.
Where you are moved between agencies for the same work, treat it as a new arrangement and run through the four questions again. Continuity of the work does not mean continuity of anything else.
The agency that goes quiet
A specific version of the work drying up, and worth separating. The agency may have lost the client, or the client may simply have nothing.
Asking the agency about the client's plans is reasonable. Asking the end client about the agency is delicate and travels fast, so it is worth being deliberate about which conversation you are having.
What they owe you by category
Depends entirely on what you are engaged as and where. Agencies frequently engage people in middle categories that carry some protections, and those protections are commonly not explained.
Asking the agency, in writing, what category you are in and what it carries is a fair question that any properly run agency can answer.
Your own account of what was supplied
Hours or work submitted, approvals, remittances, and what was paid against what.
Agencies lose records, change systems and go out of business. Your own account of what you did and what arrived is the thing that survives all three.
The thing the agency will not tell you
Whether the agency will keep putting you forward. That depends on their relationship with the client, on internal targets you cannot see, and on who else is on their books.
No rule governs it and nothing is announced. The response is the same one as everywhere else here: more than one source of work, so that one agency's decision is not your year.