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Procedures

This page answers a few common questions regarding billing principles and other practical matters. It isn't intended to be comprehensive, so please get in touch if you have questions that aren't answered here.

Initial Discussions

Whether the task involves completion of a one-off job or establishment of a more long-term relationship, the first step in developing a working relationship is discussion of your needs. This can take the form of a simple e-mail exchange or telephone conversation, or it might involve meeting in person (e.g., in the Helsinki or Tallinn area) and holding additional discussions on a scheduled or as-needed basis.

While our operations are based in Tallinn, we are open to project work in Helsinki and elsewhere, with reasonable notice.

Receiving and Delivering Material

When dealing with work-related material, we take advantage of the opportunities provided by information technology and the Internet. For example, most proofreading jobs are received and delivered via the Internet (e-mail or FTP), allowing rapid turnaround, and tele-work solutions constitute a substantial proportion of the team work on international IT projects. We am open to a variety of arrangements, Sometimes, there is no substitute for working face to face or with paper, with or without a supplementary electronic component.

Contracts and Agreements

For smaller projects, acceptance of work proposals in unambiguous discussion via e-mail is usually sufficient.

Naturally, we are willing to work with you to ensure that appropriate confidentiality is preserved and that intellectual property rights are handled fairly and with due respect.

If you have special requirements - such as for security clearances - we will work with you to expedite these processes. Please allow sufficient time for any such procedures to be completed before the work is due to commence.

Sample Work

Prospective clients for proofreading/localisation services may request editing of a small portion of a document as sample work.

Especially when a prospective client wishes to pay by the character or page, we ask to look over the job or a representative sample of it in order to arrive at a rate that will work well for both parties.

Payment

With most clients, it's important to determine an appropriate hourly rate before the work begins. Usually, invoices are issued at the end of each month and include a basic itemised accounting of the work conducted that month. Other arrangements often are made with new clients or may be made on request.

You might prefer to pay a flat fee for the project as a whole. If this is the case, a suitable amount and invoicing arrangement can be worked out in the discussion phase.

Alba Saga Digital Freelance OÜ is a registered limited-liability company in Estonia (11942366), VAT reg. EE101380645.

Mainly for proofreading and editing services:

Some texts require a great deal of revision and research; other material needs just a straightforward polishing or a second proofreading. So that the price is determined by how much work is actually required, clients frequently opt to pay by the hour rather than by the page or project. However, Anna is also willing to discuss charges per character or page.

Larger projects are quoted individually on the basis of representative samples of the work and an understanding of the scope of the task.

Most files worked with are MS Office files, RTF files with translation memory tags, files using HTML or similar mark-up, TeX-format documents, or hard copies. If you have materials in another format that you'd like us to work with, we can probably arrange something, so please ask.

© 2002-2022 Anna Shefl