I get paid on completion. Not an invoice you can sit on. The job’s done, you pay, I leave.

Sounds simple. It’s not always simple to actually enforce.

I can watch it happen on people’s faces. That moment where they realise this isn’t going to an invoice — it’s happening now, on the spot. Some people are fine with it. Some people get visibly uncomfortable. You can see them working through it.

And I get asked constantly: “Do you just send me an invoice?”

No. I don’t.

Here’s what I think is actually going on. Customers aren’t confused because payment-on-completion is unreasonable. They’re confused because a lot of small businesses have trained them out of it. Send the invoice, wait, chase it up later, wait some more. It becomes the default expectation, and then I turn up and don’t play along, and suddenly I’m the awkward one. I’m the one putting someone on the spot.

I’ve got a mate in the glass trade who’s dealt with this properly — chasing unpaid invoices, waiting on people who were never in a hurry to pay once the job was already done and there was nothing left to motivate them.

I don’t think that’s bad luck. I think that’s the predictable result of the habit.

I shouldn’t have to retrain every customer on how payment works. But because enough of the industry does it the other way, I do. And I’ll keep doing it, because the alternative is chasing money after the leverage is gone.