Why designer should pay for dev mode?

Hi everyone,

I’m running a small design company and I’m working with different clients, on small projects, every month couple clients come and go so it’s a fast flow of clients.

Previously, I was paying for Figma for my and my designers’ seats, and when I was sending designs to a client, his developer was just working on the file and that’s it. You all know this good old flow.

Now, it suddenly appears, that because I’m the file “owner”, I need to pay for a developer’s dev mode.

Once again: a designer, who made the design, now have to pay for client’s developer so he can do his job.

Of course, most of my clients will be okay to pay me extra to compensate that, but in this case I’m having a brand new huge finance management issue, where I should track somehow, which project drains how much money, request that money from each client every time, if I forget to do that, I’ll face more issues. Some of clients will forget to pay, some will refuse… etc. It’s a huge new problem for me that will drag my time constantly, and I don’t want to face it.

The only solution I see at this point, is to ask every new client to create a Figma account, create a blank page there, and give me an access to it. In this case, he will manage the financial aspect. But there’s another problem, that I can lose access to my designs at any point, as client decides to close my access to them, so I will not have one place where I store all designs I’ve created…

Best solution would be if developer pays a fixed price or smth, with having a dev mode enabled for him on any file he opens.

Does anyone face this issue or have a solution or workaround how to do this properly?