The Only Client They Have
A supplier whose entire income comes from you is in an employee's position without the protections, and it is reached without anybody agreeing to it.
Reads as a businessReads as employmentCuts both waysDepends where you are
Four factors, and no total. Every bar is the same length: the side is the claim, the size is not. Nothing here was decided; it accumulated, which is how most of these arrangements change.
A supplier's position after two years, with nothing having been agreed about any of it
Free to take other work in the agreement
Unchanged since the first engagement, and never relied on
Other clients in fact
None for two years; the last one went when your work filled the week
Ability to decline a piece of work
Formally yes; in practice declining would end the only income they have
Who carries the risk of a quiet month
You have not had a quiet month, which is the point
Their own equipment and premises
Unchanged, and still theirs
Length of the engagement
Twenty-six months continuous, which counts differently everywhere
Reads as a businessReads as employmentCuts both waysDepends where you are
Six factors, and no total.
Six factors, and the three that moved were not agreed by anybody. There is no document recording any of it, because there was no decision to record. One company's own arrangement, reconstructed for itself.
A supplier whose entire income comes from you is in the position of an employee without any of the protections. It is reached without a decision by anybody, which is what makes it the most common serious problem in this collection.
The practical issue in “The Only Client They Have” becomes clearer when expectations and evidence are visible to both sides. Used for stealth computer monitoring software, visit this official software resource can add time and project context, provided the purpose is disclosed, access is limited and every consequential interpretation receives human review.
Nothing was signed. Nobody insisted. The work simply filled the week.
For another operational perspective on “The Only Client They Have”, consult Smartsheet content centre. Compare it with the actual statement of work, jurisdiction and supplier relationship before adopting a general practice.
How it happens
In roughly this order: a good supplier, steady work, more work, the other clients fall away because there is no room, and then two years pass in which nobody asks about any of it.
Every step is a success from both sides' point of view. That is precisely why nobody looks at it.
Why it weighs
Because economic dependence is close to what employment means in substance. Somebody who cannot afford to decline, cannot afford to price firmly and cannot afford to disagree is not negotiating with you in any meaningful sense.
Different places treat this differently and some weigh it heavily, but nobody ignores it, and it is visible without reading a single document.
What it costs you commercially
The judgement you were buying. A dependent supplier agrees with you, takes every piece of work, and stops telling you when something is a bad idea.
They also stop developing, because all their experience is now of your systems and your problems, and in two more years you will have somebody whose skills have narrowed to exactly your business.
What the position costs the supplier
Everything, eventually. Their rate has not moved, their market position has evaporated, and their entire income depends on a relationship with no notice period worth the name.
A supplier in that position has a strong and understandable reason to argue later that the arrangement had become something else, and they will not be inventing it.
The conversation to have
Direct and unembarrassing, roughly once a year:
How much of your work are we at the moment? Is that where you want it to be?
That is the whole thing. It is not an intrusion into their business; it is a reasonable question between commercial parties, and the answer tells you more about the state of the arrangement than any review of the paperwork.
What to do when the answer is all of it
You cannot send them work elsewhere and should not try to arrange their business for them. What is available is a short list:
- Say it, so that both sides know.
- Look at whether your work genuinely requires a full week.
- Agree a notice period that reflects the dependence.
- Review whether the honest answer is a role.
The fourth is the one nobody wants to reach, and it is frequently correct.
When employment is the right answer
A supplier who works a full week for you, indefinitely, with no other clients, directed day to day and integrated into a team, is describing a job.
Offering it is not a defeat. It is cheaper than defending a description that stopped being true, it is usually what the person wants, and it removes every question in the last section of this collection at a stroke. Whether and how to do it, and what it costs, are questions for somebody qualified where you are.
When it is not
Plenty of suppliers work full-time for one client for a period and are genuinely independent businesses: a long project, a defined piece of work, a person who will move on to the next client when it ends.
The distinguishing feature is the edge. Work with an end that both sides expect is a different thing from work that has simply continued, even when the week looks identical.
The growth that caused it
Worth saying, because businesses in this position are often not careless but successful. The supplier was good, the work expanded, and expanding it was the right commercial call every single time.
That is the uncomfortable part: there is no bad decision anywhere in the sequence. The failure is the absence of a moment at which somebody stood back and asked what the cumulative effect had been, and the absence of that moment is a process problem rather than a judgement one.
The signal that costs nothing to watch
Whether they have ever declined anything. Two years of unbroken yes is not a sign of a good supplier; it is usually a sign of one with nowhere else to go.
That is observable from your own records, it requires no conversation, and in most businesses it has never been looked at once.