Invoice Payment Terms

Unless otherwise agreed in writing in advance of the project start date/accepted commission, we have standard 30-day payment terms on all our invoices.

In accordance with UK law, we also exercise our statutory right to claim interest (at 8% over the Bank of England base rate) and compensation for debt recovery costs under the Late Payment legislation if we were are paid according to our agreed credit terms.

You can find out more about this legislation or use the UK government’s handy late payment calculator to work out how much you can expect to charged for a late payment based on the invoice value and how many days overdue the payment. Please note that invoice on late payments accrues daily.

When Will We Invoice You?

For large-scale or long-term projects, we will always draw up a contract with a defined payment schedule in line with the project deliverables.

For articles commissioned by media outlets, our invoices are typically issued on date of publication. However, there are some exceptions:

  • If the publication commissions an article but does not, without reasonable cause, a) acknowledge receipt of a first draft submitted by the agreed filing date within 14 days and/or b) acknowledge submission of an edited draft within 14 days, and we have made reasonable attempts to follow up on the submission, TePonui Media will submit an invoice for 100% of the agreed payment amount, regardless of whether this has yet been published.
  • If the publication has not requested new edits within 21 days of receiving a first draft or 14 days of receiving an edited draft and has not yet provided a provisional date for publication/invoicing and we have made reasonable attempts to follow up, TePonui Media will submit an invoice for 100% of the agreed payment amount, regardless of whether this has yet been published.

What Kinds of Payments Can We Accept?

We can accept payment by direct bank transfer in the UK / international payments to our UK bank account using SWIFT (using the payment details provided on our invoices). If you would prefer to pay using Wise or a Monzo account QR code or payment link, we can also accommodate this.

We appreciate that some publications and organisations use external/automated vendor payment systems. We will do our best to accommodate this, but we ask that you inform us before we begin work so that we can complete onboarding and ensure that using this payment system is tenable. TePonui is not responsible for payment delays resulting from the enforced use of a client’s payment system.

Kill Fees for Freelance Journalism

Investigative journalism is expensive and potentially dangerous. Cancelling a project once it is already underway can put our team at serious physical and financial risk, and these practices threaten the viability of quality on-the-ground journalism. To protect our team and our industry, we have established firm rules about the kill fees we can accept, depending on the stage of the project and the reason for the commission being withdrawn. We have designed these to be as fair as possible to publications and to our team.

Within 48 hours of commission:

  • If your publication withdraws an article commission within 48 hours of being accepted and we have not yet submitted a draft nor incurred new direct expenses related to reporting the story, TePonui Media will not charge a cancellation fee as a goodwill gesture.
  • If your publication withdraws an article commission within 48 hours of being accepted and we have not yet submitted a draft but have demonstrably incurred new direct expenses related to reporting the story, TePonui will charge a kill fee of 10% of the agreed payment amount OR the total cost of expenses incurred (whichever is lower).
  • If your publication withdraws an article commission within 48 hours of being accepted, after we have submitted a first draft and the publication does not provide reasonable justification that TePonui is at fault (see below) at the time of the article being withdrawn, TePonui will charge a kill fee of 25%.

More than 48 hours after commission:

  • If an article commission is withdrawn by your publication more than 48 hours after being commissioned and before the agreed filing date for the story but we have not yet submitted a draft of the article, TePonui Media will charge a “kill fee” of 10% of the agreed payment amount.
  • If an article commission is withdrawn by your publication more than 48 hours after being commissioned and after we have already submitted the first draft of the article, and the publication does not provide reasonable justification that TePonui is at fault (see below) at the time of the article being withdrawn, TePonui Media will charge a “kill fee” of 50% of the agreed payment amount.
  • If an article commission is withdrawn by your publication more than 48 hours after being commissioned and after we have already completed at least one full round of edits on the draft of the article and the publication does not provide reasonable justification that TePonui is at fault (see below) at the time of the article being withdrawn, TePonui Media will charge a “kill fee” of 75% of the agreed payment amount.

Reasonable causes for waiving the kill fee:

We pride ourselves on the quality and integrity of our work, and always work closely with editors to address concerns, requests, or gaps in the reporting. However, TePonui Media will waive the kill fee if we are demonstrably at fault, i.e. the publication makes a timely, reasonable, and well-evidenced claim that:

  • The article contains plagiarised material;
  • The article was written in part or in full using an AI tool such as ChatGPT;
  • Our reporting raises serious ethical concerns;
  • We are unable to provide sufficient evidence / sources for claims too fundamental to the article to be removed and have been given reasonable time to address these concerns;
  • The article was submitted more than 48 hours after the agreed-upon filing date without prior warning or reasonable excuse and no edits have yet been requested;
  • The article is submitted less than 48 hours late without warning/reasonable excuse and the editor withdraws the commission during this 48 hour window;
  • Edits are not completed within the agreed timeframe without prior warning or reasonable excuse;
  • TePonui requests to withdraw the commission.