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Just spent 3 days fixing a broken invoice system for one client

I use a simple app called Invoice Ninja for all my billing. One client's payment portal just stopped working, showing a blank page. I thought it was a quick fix, maybe an hour. I spent a whole day checking my server, then another day on their support forums. Turns out it was a weird conflict with a browser update on their end. I had to walk them through clearing their cache over a video call, which took forever. Anyone else had a simple tool eat up a huge chunk of billable time?
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3 Comments
the_abby
the_abby1mo ago
Remember when printers just stopped working for no reason? This feels like the modern version of that. I once lost half a Tuesday because a client's email kept marking my invoices as spam. Their own IT guy set the rule and forgot about it. The fix took two minutes, but finding it meant checking every setting from my end to theirs. It's never the big, complicated thing that breaks. It's always the tiny, silent setting someone changed six months ago.
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grace_kelly45
My old boss always said to check the firewall first, but after that spam filter incident I start with the user's own settings.
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hugowright
hugowright1mo ago
Tell me about it, those little hidden issues are the worst. It's always something you'd never think to check first. How do you even bill for that kind of troubleshooting time?
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