The short answer
When your contact leaves, nobody tells the suppliers. Your invoice loses the 1 person who knew what it was for, and it stops moving without anyone deciding anything.
Find out who replaced them, and whether anyone has.
Resend the outstanding invoice with context, rather than assuming it is in a queue.
Re-establish the basics: approver, purchase order, where invoices go.
Treat the new person as someone reviewing an inherited supplier, because they are.
Verify anything that arrives claiming to be a new contact with new bank details.
This is a common and underrated cause of a stalled invoice. It looks like avoidance from your side and it is usually an empty chair.
What a departure actually breaks
What breaks | Why | The fix |
|---|---|---|
The approval | It was sitting in their queue | Ask who inherited their approvals |
The context | Nobody else knows what the invoice is for | Resend with the contract and the deliverable |
The purchase order | They raised it, and may be the only signatory | Check it is still valid and covers the balance |
The relationship | The new person did not hire you | Re-sell, briefly, before asking for anything |
The first row is mechanical and the most common. In many systems an invoice awaiting approval sits against a named person, and when that account is disabled the item waits rather than being reassigned. Nobody is ignoring you; the queue has no owner.
The third is worth checking rather than assuming. A purchase order usually survives the person who raised it, but the authority to amend or extend it may not, which matters if the engagement is still running, for the reasons in the piece on PO numbers.
How you find out, and how to find out sooner
The usual signals are an automatic reply, a bounce, or a silence that has gone on longer than that client's pattern. All 3 arrive late, often weeks after the fact.
A bounce is the clearest and the rarest, since most companies keep the address alive for a while.
An auto-reply naming a replacement is the best outcome. Write to that person the same day.
An address that accepts mail and never answers is the worst, because everything looks normal from your side. This is one of the dull explanations worth ruling out in what to do when a client stops replying.
A change on their website or professional profile, which is usually visible before anyone tells you.
The way to find out sooner is to have more than 1 thread into the company. An agency sending every invoice to 1 person has no way of noticing that person has gone, while an agency that also copies an accounts payable address learns within a day.
The first week
Move quickly, because the longer an unowned invoice sits the more it looks like a historic item nobody can account for.
Call the main company number and ask who has taken over from [name].
Write to the new person with a short, factual summary rather than a complaint.
Copy accounts payable, who will usually still be in post and can confirm the invoice status.
Ask whether the purchase order and approval route still stand.
Note the new names against the client record, which is what the onboarding checklist exists to hold.
Phoning is faster than email here and far more reliable, because a receptionist or an office manager can answer the one question you need in 15 seconds, while the same question by email reaches an empty inbox.
A new contact is a review, not an admin task
This is the part agencies get wrong. The instinct is to treat the handover as paperwork and get back to the invoice. From the other side it is nothing of the kind.
Someone new arriving usually inherits a list of suppliers they did not choose, and works through it deciding which to keep. Your outstanding invoice is a line on that list, next to a relationship they have no memory of and no particular attachment to. An email that opens with an overdue amount reads as a demand from a stranger.
So spend 3 sentences on what you do for the company before you mention money. Not a pitch, just enough that the invoice has something attached to it:
Subject: Introduction, and one outstanding item
Hi [Name],
I gather you've taken over from [previous contact] — congratulations on the move.
Quick context: we've run [the paid social programme / the website build] for [company] since [month], working with [previous contact] and reporting to [other name]. The last phase went live on [date] and I'm happy to walk you through it whenever suits.
One practical item: invoice #214 for [amount], issued [date] against PO [number], is still open. [Previous contact] had approved the work. Could you point me to whoever picks up approvals now, or confirm if it sits with you?
Happy to resend anything that's useful.
Thanks,
[Name]
The order matters. Context, then the ask, then an offer. Reversed, the same message is a demand letter from someone the reader has never heard of.
The impostor problem
A change of contact is also the single most convincing pretext a fraudster has. A message saying somebody is new in post and here are the updated payment details arrives with a ready-made explanation for why everything looks different.
It cuts both ways. You may receive one claiming to be your client's new finance contact, and your client may receive one claiming to be you. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center describes business email compromise as a scam in which criminals compromise legitimate business email accounts to cause unauthorised transfers, and its guidance is to use secondary channels or two-factor authentication to verify any request to change account information, and to check sender addresses carefully rather than trusting the display name.
In practice that means 1 rule, applied without exception: a request to change bank details is confirmed by phone, on a number you already had, before anything moves. Tell your clients this is how you work, so that a call from them is expected rather than awkward. The related signals are in what to do when a client says they paid.
Never have 1 contact
Everything above is cheaper to prevent than to repair, and the prevention is a single habit: more than 1 named person, from the start.
An accounts payable address on every invoice, alongside your contact. Sending from a shared billing address makes this normal rather than pointed.
A second name in the thread, usually whoever commissioned the work or sits above your contact.
The purchase order number and approver recorded against the client, not held in somebody's memory.
A client record that survives your own staff changes, since the same problem happens in reverse and your client notices faster than you do.
Watching the ledger weekly helps too, because an invoice that stops behaving like that client normally behaves is visible in the numbers before anyone explains why, which is part of what the weekly review catches.
FAQ
My contact at a client left and the invoice has stalled. What do I do?
Phone the company and ask who replaced them, then write to that person with brief context before mentioning the amount, and copy accounts payable. An invoice awaiting approval often sits in a disabled account's queue rather than being reassigned.
How do I find out who replaced my contact?
Call the main switchboard, which is faster and more reliable than email to an inbox nobody reads. Auto-replies and professional profiles often name the replacement before anyone tells you directly.
Should I just resend the invoice?
Resend it with context attached: the contract, the deliverable, the purchase order and who approved the work. The new person has no memory of the project, so an invoice alone reads as a demand from a stranger.
Does the purchase order still work after the person who raised it leaves?
Usually the purchase order survives, but the authority to amend or extend it may not. Check it is still valid and still covers the remaining balance before invoicing further against it.
Someone emailed saying they are the new contact with new bank details. Is that safe?
Treat it as fraud until proven otherwise. The FBI recommends verifying any change to account information through a secondary channel, so confirm by phone on a number you already had, never one supplied in the message.
How do I stop this happening again?
Keep more than 1 named person on every account, copy an accounts payable address on invoices, and record the approver and purchase order against the client rather than relying on one relationship.
Not legal or financial advice. If you suspect a fraudulent request or payment, contact your bank and the relevant authorities immediately.