The client has entered witness protection

You can watch a client approve a presentation in twelve seconds and then spend twelve days wondering whether they still possess an email address.

In this fictional office drama, the project is finished. The invoice contains the agreed fee. Suddenly, everyone is travelling, accounts is migrating, and the person who loved the work has become a protected species.

Send one calm message with the invoice number, agreed due date and payment link. Ask whether anything is preventing payment. A concrete question is harder to misunderstand than “just checking in,” which has the authority of a moth apologising to a lamp.

Keep the follow-up schedule somewhere outside your head. Otherwise every quiet afternoon becomes a tiny unpaid surveillance operation.

For the next project, agree payment milestones before work begins. Record who approves invoices and what information their accounts team needs. If a purchase order is required, discover that while everybody is still enthusiastic about replying.

You may never learn why an adult with a calendar forgot Tuesday. You can stop making their disappearance your daily creative practice.