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File in small claims court if the amount is within the limits they set.
It's fast and cheap or free to do, and minimal time to pursue when the
date comes up.
Collecting, however, is not always easy, if the judgement goes your way.
This depends on your locality; some help you enforce judgements, some
don't, but the leverage you have is that there's a judgement on the books
against the company or individual. Investigate if this information is
automatically made part of that entity's credit record. If so, it may
well be worth their effort to pay you off, but meanwhile, you've not
invested a lot in trying to get what you earned.
As another poster noted, investigate your prospective customers'
creditworthiness, and also establish partial payments in your *WRITTEN*
contract for the project.
STC may have model contracts you can follow, or perhaps others on the
list can point you to some.
