ZAMBO.

Direct answer

The company changed owners. Your invoice did not change. Get the new owner to say so in writing.

You did the work, it was accepted, the invoice is sitting in a payment queue, and then the announcement lands: the company has been acquired. Your contact may leave, the finance team may be replaced, and the new owners systems may have no record of you at all. In most buyouts the debts travel with the business in some form, but the practical question is never the legal theory; it is which named finance team, in which company, has your invoice on a list with a payment date. This page walks the order: learn what kind of sale it was, put the full proof packet in front of both sides while the handover is still warm, get the balance acknowledged in writing by whoever now pays, and keep new work separate until the old money has an owner.

See the instrument first: the live demo runs one real call and hands you its verifiable receipt, no signup.

Updated November 12, 2026. First published November 12, 2026. The records quoted below are real and public, read back from the live service on November 12, 2026.

Step 1. Find out what kind of sale it was, in writing

Two broad shapes cover most buyouts, and they point at different payers. In a share or stock sale, the company itself continues, just with new owners: same legal entity, same debts, new management, and your invoice stays an invoice of that company. In an asset sale, the buyer purchases the business, its customers, its name, its equipment, and only the liabilities it agreed to take; debts it did not assume can remain with the old company, which may still exist, may be winding down, or may have been left with the sale proceeds. You do not need to decide which shape applies as a legal matter; you need to ask, in writing, and early: has the company been sold as a whole, or have its assets been sold, and which entity should suppliers with open invoices deal with now? Ask your existing contact and, if there is one, the announcement contact at the buyer. The answer routes everything else, and asking in the first days matters, because the old company in an asset sale is easiest to reach before it finishes winding down, and the buyers supplier list is being built right now, with or without you on it.

Step 2. Send the same proof packet to both sides, once, complete

Do not dribble documents out as each side asks. Assemble one packet and send the identical copy to the old finance contact and the new owners supplier or accounts contact: the agreement or commissioning message, the invoice with its number, date, and amount, the delivery evidence, and the acceptance if the work was formally accepted. Add a one paragraph cover note that does the readers job for them: who you are, what the work was, when it was delivered and accepted, what is owed, and what you are asking for, which is written confirmation of who now holds the balance and when it will be paid. Completeness is the strategy. A buyer integrating a new company meets dozens of supplier claims; the ones that arrive as a single checkable file get logged and paid, and the ones that arrive as fragments and recollections get queried, parked, or quietly lost in a mailbox migration. Send it to both sides because you do not yet know which side pays, and because each side knowing the other has the same packet ends the easiest deflection, which is that the other company has the records.

Step 3. Lead the packet with the delivery and acceptance record

The buyers first question about any supplier claim is whether the work was real and agreed. Your memory cannot answer that for a team that was not there; a record can. The record format is AER-1, published as an IETF Internet-Draft (draft-zambo-aer1-26), and each step carries a verifiable receipt: a receipt proves the saved result was not changed since it was saved. The two public records below show the decision layer a new finance team can check without knowing anything about you:

Accepted: the decision is on the record

Pending: checked, and still waiting on a decision

The accepted record is the shape your claim wants: steps checked, decided by the client on a stated date, release ok_to_release, all readable by a stranger at a link. That is what survives a change of ownership intact, because it does not depend on your contact still being employed there to vouch for it. The pending record shows the weaker hand: work checked but never decided on, release on hold. If your job sits in that state, say so honestly in the packet and ask the new owner to complete the decision as part of acknowledging the balance; a pending acceptance plus a change of ownership is exactly how good invoices die of nobody being responsible for them.

Step 4. Get the balance acknowledged by the new payer, with a date

The goal of the packet is one written reply: we hold invoice number so and so, for this amount, payable on this date, from this entity. Chase that reply, not a general reassurance. If the buyer runs a supplier onboarding process, complete it promptly, vendor forms, tax details, bank information through their secure route, because a missing vendor record is the most common innocent reason an acknowledged invoice still does not pay. If the answer is that the old company retains your debt, get that in writing too, and immediately put the same packet and the buyers statement in front of the old companys remaining contact or its wind down administrator, asking for their payment date while proceeds and people are still reachable. What you must not accept is the loop: each side naming the other, with no written statement from either. Break it by asking both, in the same week, for a written statement of who holds the balance; the two answers, or one answer and one silence, tell you where the claim actually lives, and that is the point at which formal routes, a debt adviser, or a lawyer become a proportionate next step for larger sums.

Step 5. Keep new work for the new owner separate until the old balance has an owner

Acquirers often want continuity: same supplier, new projects, starting immediately. That enthusiasm is useful leverage and a real risk in the same shape. Agree new work under the new entitys own paper, in its name, at agreed terms, and make the first new job small or deposit backed until the old balance is acknowledged in writing. This is not punishing the buyer; a company that has just paid for a business expects to settle its inherited supplier list, and a professional who arrives with a complete packet and a clean separation between the old balance and new work is the easiest supplier on that list to deal with. What you should not do is let new invoices merge into the old fog, where an unpaid legacy balance can be used as a reason to query new work, or new payments quietly applied against old amounts nobody has acknowledged. Two ledgers, two sets of paper, one relationship.

What this page cannot settle

This page cannot decide who is legally liable for your invoice; that turns on the sale documents, which you will never see, and on the law of the place, and this is general information, not legal advice. For a large balance, a lawyer or debt recovery professional who can write to both entities formally is worth their fee early, while records and people are still reachable. It also cannot stop a company from failing during a sale, which is the one version where a good packet may still not produce payment. A verifiable receipt proves the saved result was not changed since it was saved; it does not prove a buyer assumed a debt. What the record settles is the half that gets disputed first: that the work was delivered and accepted, for this amount, on these dates.

Frequently asked questions

The company that owes me money was just bought by another company. Who pays my invoice now?

Usually one of the two companies does, and your job is to get that named in writing fast. If the company was sold as a whole in a share sale, the company itself continues under new owners and its debts, including your invoice, continue with it. If its assets were sold, the buyer pays only the liabilities it agreed to take, and the rest stay with the old company. Ask both sides in writing which shape the sale took and which entity holds supplier balances, and send both the same complete packet at the same time: agreement, invoice, delivery evidence, and the acceptance record. Then chase one specific reply, the entity, the amount, and the payment date, in writing, and complete any supplier onboarding the payer requires. If both sides point at each other with nothing in writing, escalate formally while the old company still exists and its people are reachable.

What if the new owner says they did not buy the companys debts?

That can be true in an asset sale, and it is not the end of the claim; it is a routing answer. Thank them, keep their statement in writing, and take it straight to the old company, its directors, or its wind down administrator, with the same packet and a request for their payment date. The old company received the sale proceeds, and supplier debts it retained are settled from that side. Speed matters here, because a company winding down gets harder to reach every month, and claims made early, in a complete and checkable form, are handled before claims that surface a year later. If the old side has dissolved or will not answer and the sum justifies it, that is the moment for a lawyer or a debt recovery professional, not for more emails.

My invoice was not due yet when the sale happened. Does that change anything?

It changes the timing, not the claim, and it makes early contact more valuable, not less. An invoice inside its terms is exactly the kind that falls out of a finance system migration: not overdue, not chased, and not carried across. Send the packet before the due date, tell the new payer the date the invoice falls due, and ask for the written acknowledgment and the vendor setup to be completed inside the terms, so payment on the due date is a process outcome rather than a rescue. Keep your own reminder schedule running across the change of ownership as if nothing had happened; the due date in your agreement did not move just because the ownership did.

Should I keep working for the new owner while the old invoice is open?

Yes, carefully, and on separate paper. New work belongs to the new entity under its own agreement, its own invoices, and its own record, never merged with the legacy balance. Make the first job small, or take a deposit, until the old balance is acknowledged in writing with a payment date; once a buyer has shown it settles inherited amounts properly, normal terms are reasonable again. Keeping the two ledgers separate protects both directions: the old claim cannot be used to query new deliveries, and new payments cannot be quietly reallocated against an unacknowledged old amount. A buyer acting in good faith will read this as professionalism, because it is how their own finance team wants inherited suppliers to behave.

How does a delivery record help when the people who hired me are gone?

It replaces their memory. When the work runs through Zambo, every step lands on the job record with a verifiable receipt under AER-1, published as IETF Internet-Draft draft-zambo-aer1-26, the client accepts on that record, and the acceptance view shows status, decider, date, and release state, so a finance team that never met you can check what was delivered and decided without finding a witness inside a company that has changed owners. New users get 20 calls and 1 wrap-up free every day per agent, and picking up work in another AI is always free. For $0.99, put your next job for a company in play on one record, so if its ownership changes mid payment cycle, your claim arrives as a link the new team can check in minutes: get the Day Pass. A Day Pass is unlimited for 24 hours, no subscription. Ongoing use is the Zambo Pass at $29 a month, $19 a month for $ZAMBO holders, or Lifetime at $250 one time.

Related