Every guide to working in Belgium ends on the same sentence. Do not offer both languages and quietly outsource the one you do not speak.
That is correct. It is also where the advice stops, one step before the part you actually need, because the alternative to hiding a partner is not refusing the brief. It is naming the partner.
Three structures, and only three
Two creators, one brief. Everything else is a variation on these.
One of you is the contractor
You quote, you invoice, you sign, and your partner invoices you. The client sees one supplier and one price.
Cleanest for the client, heaviest for you: you carry the delay between being paid and paying, and you answer for work you did not film.
You each invoice separately
The client is told there are two of you and receives two invoices. Nobody carries anyone else's cash gap.
The cost is friction. Some clients cannot raise a second supplier without going through procurement again, which in Belgium often means an agency layer that has already closed its supplier list for the quarter.
One quote, two lines, one contact
A single document with both names and both amounts, one person designated as the contact, each paid directly.
This is the one that fits most cases and the one nobody proposes, because it takes an extra ten minutes to write.
| Structure | Who the client chases when it fails | Who carries the cash gap | When it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| One contractor | The contractor, alone | The contractor | Client wants a single supplier |
| Two separate invoices | Whoever did that half | Nobody | Direct client, no procurement wall |
| One quote, two lines | The named contact | Nobody | Almost everything else |
Read the second column before the third. The question of who gets the angry call is what decides the price of each structure, and it is the question creators skip.
Agree these four before saying yes
Not after the shoot, and not by assumption.
Who is the client's contact, so the brand is never told two different delivery dates. Who owns what in the final file, because a video with two authors sold under one licence is a dispute waiting for a reason. What happens if one of you delivers late, in one sentence, written. And when the partner gets paid: on client payment, or on delivery.
That last one is where friendships end. If you are the contractor and you pay your partner only when the client pays, say it in advance and it is a normal commercial term. Discover it together in week six and it is a betrayal.
Beyond language
The pair is obvious for French and Dutch, and it is not only for that.
It works for volume, when a brief asks for twelve videos in ten days and one person cannot film that. It works for formats you do not own, when the brief needs a kitchen, a car or a child and your partner has one. It works for gear, and it works for the simple case of two very different faces in one campaign, which brands increasingly ask for and a solo creator cannot supply at all.
None of these require you to pretend to be an agency. They require one honest line in the proposal: there are two of us, here is who does what.
Keep reading
- Three Foreign Markets Before Lunch
- They are sending the box instead of the money
- Working as a UGC Creator in Wallonia
- For a Restaurant, Reach Is a Cost
- The complete UGC guide for Belgium
Frequently asked questions
Does the client have to know there are two of us?
Yes. Not for morality, for practicality: in a market this size the brand will meet your partner eventually, and finding out late reframes every earlier invoice as something hidden.
What if my partner is not registered as self employed?
Then they cannot invoice, and the structure collapses to you paying someone informally, which is your problem and not theirs. Get that checked with an accountant before the brief, not after.
Can we present ourselves under one name?
You can present a name, but the invoices still come from real registered entities. A shared name that has no legal existence behind it creates confusion at exactly the moment when someone needs paying.
How do we split when one of us brought the client?
Openly, and preferably as a fixed finder share on top of an even split of the work. Leaving it implicit is how the second job in a pair becomes the last one.