What Changes When Your Clients Are in One Country and You Work in Another?

You advise UK clients through a UK company and plan to do the work from another country. Your clients will still see your company name on invoices. Behind the scenes, the work will be performed somewhere else, and your own employment or residence may change. A client’s address, the company’s legal home and the place where you work all matter for different reasons. It helps to follow a single contract from first conversation through to invoice and ask which location matters at each stage.

Suppose a consultant keeps her UK customers and works from a rented flat abroad. She usually delivers advice on video calls and occasionally returns for workshops. One client requires approval before its information can be accessed from another country. Another pays from a regional office outside the UK. Those details are relevant even though both clients originally hired the same company for similar work.

Map the sale and delivery separately

1. Identify the seller. Write down which legal entity signs, invoices, receives payment and is responsible for delivery. If you expect another company to provide part of the work, identify its role.
2. Identify the customer. Establish which entity buys the service and which location it buys from. The team you meet and the business named on the order can be in different places.
3. Describe where work happens. Record the places where people negotiate, sign, perform services and support the client. Note recurring UK trips and whether any staff or contractors will work on site.
4. Check what is being sold. Explain whether the client buys professional advice, access to software, an on-site event or another service. Give your accountant the statement of work and any bundled items.

Read the terms before you change the delivery location

Review client agreements for restrictions on where work is done, who can access systems and which subcontractors are permitted. Ask how to obtain consent if the terms require it. Check whether the work is regulated and whether your professional insurance covers delivery in the proposed location. If you need to visit a client, describe the actual activities to the relevant immigration adviser. Check those against permission for the visit, including workshops, negotiations and productive work.

For data, distinguish someone travelling while employed by the same organisation from a separate overseas entity accessing a client system. The Information Commissioner’s Office explains when making personal information accessible to a separate organisation outside the UK can be a restricted transfer. Contractual requirements, local law and security responsibilities can also matter. Give your advisers a simple diagram of who can see the data, where they access it and which company employs or contracts with them.

Arrange for client and supplier communications to follow the new operating pattern. Give the client a named contact for urgent work and agree which hours are covered. Ask whether an in-person meeting can be moved, handled by someone local or scheduled with enough notice for travel. Include a plan for access problems while you are overseas, especially if your work depends on a client-issued device or authentication method.

Ask for the VAT and tax answer on a sample invoice

For UK VAT, HMRC’s place-of-supply guidance distinguishes between business and consumer customers. Under the general rule for services supplied to a business, the place of supply is where the customer belongs. Under the general rule for consumers, it is where the supplier belongs. Special rules can change the outcome, so the service and the customer’s status matter. Ask the accountant how to treat a specific invoice and what evidence the business should retain to support the position.

If the work or customer involves another country, check local VAT or sales tax, any reverse charge and whether the customer is expected to withhold tax from payment. Discuss the income tax and payroll position for the person doing the work separately from company tax and invoicing. A founder can perform duties in one place while their company earns a fee under its own contract. The customer can have a tax question of its own. Give each adviser the same facts so those separate questions are answered consistently.

Use a sample statement of work with the customer’s actual legal name, billing location and the service description. Ask which wording needs to appear on the invoice and which documents prove the customer’s status. If a client withholds an amount, ask for the evidence needed to account for it or claim relief where available. Put the net cash expected into the forecast and keep the gross invoice amount for the accountant.

Price the work you can actually deliver

Update the budget for the trips, tools and support needed under the new arrangement. If you quote a project in pounds but pay most suppliers in another currency, test what happens if conversion is less favourable. If some work has to be done in person, agree who pays for travel, how much notice you need and what changes to the delivery date cost. A project can retain the same price and become much less predictable if you absorb costs that used to be small.

Discuss changes with the customer in terms of what they buy. Tell them when their named team will be available, whether the billing details change and which service commitments you can meet. If an approval is needed, obtain it before changing the way you deliver. Keep the approved terms in the same file as the invoice and security instructions so the team does not have to reconstruct what the client agreed.

It can help to plan a pilot with one engagement before applying the same arrangements across your customer base. Use that engagement to check a deadline, record a cost and capture any new support request. Revisit the terms if the actual workload requires more in-person days or another provider.

Test whether the customer experience works

• Time zones. Compare the hours when clients normally request decisions with your proposed workday. Agree which requests need a same-day answer and who can give it.
• Delivery. Identify the tasks that require you to be physically present or use a particular system. Confirm travel, access and customer approval before the first engagement.
• Cash. Check what currency the client pays, which entity receives it and how fees or deductions are shown. Allow for settlement delays in the billing cycle.
• Change control. Define what should trigger a fresh review, such as hiring an overseas contractor, leasing a workspace, changing the billing entity or starting to sell to consumers.

Run a rehearsal with your most demanding existing client. For a consultancy, that might mean approving a request, accessing the necessary material, holding a workshop and issuing a bill. Check what has to happen within UK hours and which steps depend on the client’s IT or finance team. If one step fails, resolve it before making the new arrangement routine. The client can usually work with an agreed change more easily than with a change they discover when a deadline slips.

After the first month, reconcile how the work was actually done with the plan. Check the location of staff, the contracting and invoicing entities, and whether any amount was deducted or delayed. Keep the answers with the contract so the next engagement starts from a reliable record. When the business adds a new kind of customer or another place of work, repeat the same exercise for that engagement.