07/27/2026
I lost 5,000 dollars of a client's money in a single afternoon. Well, technically, I just gave it back to the customer who paid it originally.
There I was, deep into a prior year cleanup project, when an invoice from nine months back got refunded to the client. No notification to me. No request from them. No business reason on earth to justify it. Money that should have stayed put simply left the account. An invoice that old should never have been eligible for a refund in the first place, let alone processed without so much as a confirmation click.
The next day I signed in to continue the cleanup and spotted it immediately, because I was right at the tail end of the project. What on earth. NOOOOOO!
I composed myself and called Intuit support immediately. Simple explanation. The support person I spoke with was kind, understanding, and most importantly, agreed with me that something was very wrong. After ONE HOUR and FORTY MINUTES, we concluded it was a system error on their side. They escalated it straight to engineering. I genuinely hope this never happens to anyone else, and if it does, I hope they catch it as fast as I did.
A few very polite phone calls later, and thankfully, everything went smoothly.
The money was back in the account within three days.
Once the money goes out, its in the merchants hands now. Intuit can't dip in there and claw it back. The client kindly repaid that invoice. They also went ahead and paid down their other open invoices, bringing their account fully current.
Mistakes are going to happen. Software fails, systems glitch, humans miss things. What determines the outcome is not whether something goes wrong. It is what you do in the first hour after you find out. Fast, honest, and human beats polished and delayed every time.
The silver lining: support refunded June's subscription and gave us 50% off for a full year. I did not ask for any of it. I was simply kind and professional, and it came back around.
You catch more flies with honey.
