True story · retold with care
Maryann Rolle fed the whole site and was never paid
Maryann Rolle runs Exuma Point Bar and Grille in the Bahamas. In 2017 she and her team cooked for the crew building the Fyre Festival, thousands of meals over several weeks, on the promise of payment to come.
The festival collapsed. She told the New York Times she was owed $134,000, and that she had spent about $50,000 of her own savings paying her staff in the meantime. Strangers later raised more than $200,000 for her through a fundraiser. No business should need one.
What went wrong
The work was done first and the money asked for afterwards, which meant she was lending a customer her own savings without ever agreeing to. When they did not pay, she had lost the work and everything she had spent doing it.
The habit that prevents it
Take a deposit before you start, and bill in stages as the work goes. Never carry a customer's project on your own account.
How you'd see this coming in Punctual
Punctual makes deposits and staged, milestone invoices the ordinary way to bill, so the money moves with the work instead of arriving after all of it.