Most people plan a move abroad around visas, flights and finding a flat with decent broadband. The client conversation happens later, usually the week before departure, often as a passing comment: “By the way, I’ll be working from Lisbon for a few months.”
That comment is where problems begin. Not because clients object to where you are, but because they build a mental model of your working day, and if it is wrong, every small delay starts to look like neglect. A short written agreement fixes most of it. Not a contract, necessarily — an email both sides reply to is enough.
Start with the overlap, not the time zone
Hearing “I’ll be eight hours ahead” tells a client almost nothing useful. What they need is when you are reachable.
From 1 October I’ll be in Bangkok, eight hours ahead of the UK. I’ll be online from 08:00 to 11:00 your time every weekday, and I’ll check email again each afternoon.
Two things catch people out. The first is the day boundary: when it is Friday afternoon in London, it may already be Saturday where you are, which shortens the working week in ways nobody has accounted for. The second is daylight saving. The UK shifts in late March and late October, and other countries shift on different dates or not at all, so your gap widens and narrows by an hour twice a year — sometimes for a few weeks. Note both dates in writing, or you will get a confused message asking why you missed a standing call.
Be specific about connectivity
Everyone says they have good wifi. Clients have heard it before and it means nothing on its own.
Give them facts instead: the speed you actually get where you are staying, how many devices you can run at once, and — more importantly — what happens when it fails. A reasonable set of promises looks like this:
- A primary connection at your accommodation, tested before you commit to the booking
- A backup: a local SIM with data, a phone you can tether from, or a desk at a coworking space within walking distance
- An agreed rule that outages under an hour are invisible and need no reporting
- A commitment to message the client as soon as you are back online if an outage runs longer, with a realistic new estimate
- A shared understanding of what counts as urgent enough to interrupt a call or a weekend
Power cuts belong in the same paragraph. In some places they are occasional; in others they are scheduled. If your work depends on a laptop battery, tell the client how many hours you can keep going, and where you would go to plug in.
Separate working hours from response times
These are not the same thing, and clients muddle them unless you spell both out.
Write down something like: “I’m at my desk from 08:00 to 16:00 local time. I reply to email within one working day. If something can’t wait until my morning, mark it urgent and I’ll respond within two hours where I can.” Then decide what happens overnight. If a client’s day ends while you sleep, will they wait, or is there someone else who can make a decision? Setting an agreed cut-off — anything arriving after 18:00 UK time gets answered the next working day — is far easier to keep than a vague promise to be flexible.
Money: currency, fees and dates
Currency and transfer costs
Decide the currency you invoice in and who absorbs the transfer cost. If you bill in sterling while living somewhere with a different currency, exchange rates move, and bank charges can quietly take a slice of every invoice. Agree a fixed currency, and be explicit about whether the client pays the sending fee, you pay the receiving fee, or you build the cost into your rate.
Invoice dates and terms
State the invoice date, the payment terms and what happens if payment slips: invoice on the last working day of the month, payment within 14 days, a polite reminder at day 21. A short note on late payment is normal between businesses and much less awkward if it is agreed up front.
If you are moving country mid-project, your tax position may change. Residence rules, double taxation agreements and VAT registration all depend on your circumstances, so speak to an accountant who knows both countries rather than relying on a forum thread.
Holidays and absence
Public holidays differ, and clients rarely check. Tell them at the start which days you will be off, and give a fortnight’s notice for planned leave. A single line in the original email handles it: “I’ll send a list of my non-working days each quarter.”
Also agree what happens if you are ill or a flight home is cancelled. Nobody enjoys this part, but a client who knows you will tell them within a few hours, and who has a fallback for deadlines, is far less anxious than one left guessing.
When something goes wrong
Even good arrangements break. Agree the process in advance so you are not negotiating it under pressure.
If you lose connectivity for more than a few hours, who do you tell, how, and what happens to the deadline? If a deliverable will be late, how much notice does the client need? For retainer work, is there a point at which you offer a credit? Writing that down protects the relationship, and stops one bad week from turning into a lost client.
Before you book the flight
None of this takes long, but it has to happen before you are juggling an unreliable connection and a deadline. Send one email covering:
- Your location, time zone and the dates of any daylight saving shifts
- Your core overlap hours, expressed in the client’s time
- Primary and backup connectivity, and how you will report an outage
- Response times, and what “urgent” means in practice
- Invoice currency, dates, terms and who pays the transfer fees
- Planned absence, plus the process if something goes wrong
Ask them to reply confirming, or to flag anything that will not work. Ten minutes of writing now saves months of explaining later. And if you are unsure about tax, visas or employment rules in either country, take advice from a qualified professional before you go — the rules differ everywhere, and they change.
Photo: Brian_Cragun / Pixabay
