I have taken on a new client who has a six month backlog of work. At our meeting he spoke of his previous bookkeeper who had said that she was unable to do his books due to family commitments, I suspect it was due to the large amount of work it will take to unravel the mess he is in! Anyway, he said that he had only paid half her fees, which obviously sent alarm bells ringing. anyway to cut a long story short, once I had the paperwork and had a look at the state of his accounting records, it became apparent there was a large amount of work to be done. I e-mailed him on Wednesday evening and told him it would take quite a bit of time to get him up to date and told him how many hours I had spent doing it so far. He said he would authorise up to 20 hours (£400) and to let him know once I got to that point. I got an e-mail from him today providing me with some info I had asked for and in it he has said that he has been billed by his accountants and is querying this.

i have done 11.5 hours work and I think it could be done in slightly more than the 20 hours but not much more but because of the fact that he is querying bills left right and centre, I'm wondering whether I should issue an interim invoice for what I have done so far (Damage limitation!).

would anyone also suggest doing this? How would you word it in the nicest way possible? Obviously he might turn out to be a good payer but the work I have done so far, for me is quite a lot for one customer!