u/Impossible_Sir1803

We’ve had a couple of situations recently where large projects kicked off normally, work progressed fine, and then finance issues only surfaced much later when invoices became due.

Not talking about bad clients necessarily — more cases where budgets, approvals, or cash position clearly weren’t as solid as expected at the start.

Curious how other firms handle this without making the relationship feel awkward. Do you rely purely on deposits/staged billing, or are there cleaner ways to gauge whether a client is financially ready before committing significant time and resources?