Subcontracting Work You Cannot Do Yourself

Taking work and passing part of it to someone else keeps a client served when capacity or skills run short. It also places you between two agreements that may not match.

You remain liable to the client

The client's contract is with you. Where a subcontractor delivers late or badly, the client's remedy runs against you, and the subcontractor's failure is your problem to solve.

This is the central asymmetry of subcontracting. The work moves and the responsibility does not, which is why the margin taken is a payment for risk rather than for introduction.

Some clients prohibit subcontracting or require prior approval, and doing it in breach of that term puts the main contract at risk regardless of delivery quality.

The payment gap in the middle

Client payment terms and subcontractor payment terms are separate. Where the subcontractor is paid faster than the client pays, the difference is funded from your own money.

Aligning the two, or building the gap into pricing, is what stops a profitable arrangement from creating a cash shortage.

Pay-when-paid arrangements shift the risk down the chain and are restricted or unenforceable in some jurisdictions and sectors, so they cannot be assumed to work.

Matching the two contracts

Obligations accepted from the client should be reflected in what the subcontractor agrees, including deadlines, revision rights, confidentiality and ownership of the finished work.

A mismatch leaves you owing the client something the subcontractor never promised, and the gap only becomes visible when something goes wrong.

Intellectual property is the most common mismatch. Where the client contract assigns ownership and the subcontract does not, you cannot deliver what you have promised.

Status questions run alongside

A regular subcontractor working under your direction, to your schedule and using your equipment can begin to look like a worker or employee rather than an independent supplier.

The tests are the same ones applied to any status question and turn on control, substitution and integration rather than on what the agreement calls the relationship.

Getting this wrong can create obligations for tax, contributions and employment rights, and the rules and enforcement differ substantially by jurisdiction.

What the client is entitled to know

Transparency about who is doing the work is usually the safer position, particularly where the client selected you for specific expertise.

Concealed subcontracting damages trust disproportionately when discovered, and it is usually discovered through a document, a file property or a direct contact.

Where the arrangement is disclosed and managed, it becomes a capacity solution rather than a hidden risk, and often supports taking on larger work than one person could deliver.