Doesn't it sting a little when a simple trick like that goes unnoticed for years? I feel your pain, my coffee can has been doing me dirty this whole time too.

My uncle ran a small flooring business for years and his whole system was just a spiral notebook and a landline. He would call people every Sunday night, like clockwork, and just chat them up before ever mentioning the money. Drove me nuts as a kid because I thought he was wasting time being nice. But here is the thing, he almost never got stiffed. People paid him because they liked him, not because of any tool. When he died we found stacks of those notebooks and hardly any unpaid balances. Now I use an app and it works fine, but sometimes I wonder if the reminders do the heavy lifting or if it is just that people need a nudge from something that is not a human they have to face. The app never feels awkward asking, which is probably the real trick. The software is just doing what a polite Sunday phone call used to do, except it does not care if the guy in Tampa screens the call.