r/Accounting • u/pboom5043 • 17h ago
Invoices Due Upon Receipt
Does anyone else hate it when vendors payment terms are “due upon receipt”? It drives me nuts when non-accounting people do this on their invoices and then are upset when it takes a week or two for payment to go out.
1) we have systems in place to confirm the invoice is both real and accurate
2) our bank takes a day to do ACH payments (entered on a Monday goes out on a Tuesday)
3) sometimes our small accounting team does not have bandwidth to do the AP portion THE SECOND YOU EMAIL THE INVOICE
4) I can’t turn around payment if you send me an invoice at 4:30 pm. The bank has cutoff times for approvals
It’s just unrealistic and then they bitch about not getting paid. Karen, the payment is coming. You’re getting paid the same week you sent the invoice, do you not get how rare and quick that is?
Rant over
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u/the_good_twin 17h ago
I have a service provider whose terms are due upon receipt. They date the monthly invoices at the end of each month but don't send them until the middle of the next. I have actually taken calls from their AR people telling me the payment is late for an invoice they haven't even sent yet.
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u/Maleficent-Nature303 14h ago
This happens all the time. I don’t know how many vendors I’ve had over the years who send a “due on receipt” invoice that’s dated two weeks prior to the day they emailed it. And then the late notices start showing up immediately.
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u/OddPlunders 16h ago
I used to have a vendor call me regularly and hound me about their invoices being past due. I'd look at them while I was on the phone with him and realize that they were due the day before...bc they were emailed to us the day before.
I was like "Man, to be honest, we haven't even looked at this invoice yet and even if we had, we only process payments once or twice a week." (I forget now how often it was). He told me "That's not how this works" and I could hear the smirk on his face when he said it.
Alright, then. I scheduled a meeting with him and the highest person that I had contact info for in their company and I'll never forget the look on their faces when I explained that we operated 50+ locations across multiple states and that our AP dept stayed pretty caught up but there was no way that they were going to get paid same day. If they weren't ok with getting paid closer to 15 days terms then I could talk to our procurement director about finding another vendor, but I didn't feel like it should be necessary.
It turns out that they had setup each of our locations separately in their system and didn't realize they were all the same company. They thought they were going to bully a small mom and pop operation until they realized that, collectively, were were probably their biggest account.
I requested a new account manager, I hated that guy, and they stopped hounding us for same day payments after that.
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u/West_Coast_Buckeye 13h ago
My favorite is when the AP team doesn't even recieve the invoice because someone set up the service and their email is the only one used. Then they get mad when the service is disrupted... can't pay a bill i never received, Bob.
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u/BidAffectionate9960 3h ago
Yes, happens all the time. AP won’t get the invoice until the vendor is telling their contact that it’s past due. That’s when they decide to check payment status. Now AP is stuck with a rush invoice to process and gets blamed for the late payment.
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u/SarahD3545 CPA (US) 12h ago
“Due upon receipt” and they backdate the invoice to 2 months ago
👀 looking at you, law firms.
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u/TehBaconBitts 16h ago
I honestly just ignore those and wait standard 30 days.
What really annoys me are people who will have invoices that clearly state 30/45 days, with no discount terms for early payment, and then beg for payment within a week of sending the invoice.
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u/Shillen1 13h ago
Yeah I love those the most when they come begging for payment a full month before the payment terms on the invoice. Like I can pay this now but you told me I had until the end of next month so why would I.
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u/Historical_Kale4720 12h ago
I honestly just ignore those and wait standard 30 days.
That's not right either. If you sign a contract, you pay them when the contract says. Don't sign contracts with terms you don't like.
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u/TehBaconBitts 11h ago
Obviously we pay contractual obligations when due. But if Joe Shmoe sends me a $60 invoice for pest control or some random service, I’m not bypassing our SOPs because they believe payment is due immediately.
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u/Historical_Kale4720 11h ago
Payment is due immediately. That's the norm for "Joe Shmoe" contractors. They come, you pay when they're done. If your company wants to pay later, it needs to have a vendor policy with a required vendor contract where you give the terms and only use vendors who agree.
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u/Alycatgrl 10h ago
That’s not having credit with a vendor and is the service equivalent of COD.
That’s different than a vendor sending an invoice due on receipt.
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u/Historical_Kale4720 10h ago
Where does it say you have credit with that vendor? If it does, it's not due on receipt. If it doesn't, it is. Same as you having to pay your copay on the way out of the doctor.
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u/Alycatgrl 10h ago
If they leave the building without full payment, (either cash/check in hand or a 100% deposit) you have credit. You may not have terms, but you have credit.
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u/Historical_Kale4720 10h ago
Damn. Last time I tried that they were yelling words like shoplifting and police.
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u/TehBaconBitts 10h ago
Dawg it’s really not that deep
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u/Historical_Kale4720 10h ago
You're right. It's simple. Good companies pay the man on his terms or get a clear agreement on theirs from the beginning. Bad companies and bad people bully the working man and try to see what they can get away with.
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u/Ashamed-Pop2809 17h ago
Insurance is the worst when it comes to this. You get your renewal information to them months in advance. Then the day before the old coverage expires they come to you with you new policy and a due upon receipt invoice.
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u/Slight-Battle-8412 6h ago
It’s cause a lot of business insurance policies are placed with brokers outside of your insurance agent and they have to turn the client funds around to the broker in 20 days or your policy cancels.
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u/BatmanandReuben 12h ago
Lol no. I don’t give a damn what the invoice says. I pay when I’m ready. 💋
Edit: and im not paying your silly little finance charges either, sweetheart.
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u/offtrailrunning Human Verified 10h ago
We had a vendor auto charge our credit card which was perfect. It randomly stopped working after they were bought out, we got late penalty's, I let them know it wasn't working. They had no idea and had no idea how to fix it. I let them know I wasn't paying them and they are still on account with reminders coming in. No no no I'm not paying those.
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u/AffectionateKey7126 16h ago edited 16h ago
Dealt with this one piece of shit vendor that would send the bill on the 15th, date it on the 1st, and then put net 20 on the invoice. When they would call on the 20th, they would then refuse to talk to anyone other than the one person who signed the contract.
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u/WayneKrane 16h ago
Do you pay attention to past due invoice reminders? If you’re invoice isn’t getting paid, it’s because my boss/company doesn’t want to pay it today 🤷♂️
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u/SamakFi88 7h ago
I have one specific client that we had originally agreed to Net30. As in, I expect payment in my hand by day 30. You need 2 weeks to process and send a check? That's fine, no problem. But they wait until day 30 (or later) to process a paper check, wait 2-4 days to get it in the mail, and then it takes 4 business days to deliver. Net30 turned into us getting paid 45+ days later. And if we didn't ride them about it, they would "forget". We have reminder emails at 15 days, 7 days, 2 days, and day-of.
On renewal of our contract, we told them pointedly that were requiring the contract state payment on receipt, and if they get it payed within 30 days, no late fees will be applied. They "forgot" the very next invoice, and we applied late fees per our contract. They complained, we waived the late fee (our discretion to do so is also in the contract). Then they did it again. We added the late fees, they complained, we stuck to it and declined an additional courtesy waiver. Suddenly, they're very good at paying within 30 days now.
So it isn't that we expect payment in 20 minutes. We just needed a contract with sufficient language to make sure we're paid in a reasonable timeframe. "Due on receipt" is the signal that they can't keep paying us later and later without recourse.
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u/Relevant_Struggle CPA (US) 15h ago
Unless it's critical or a discount for paying early, we just process them net 30
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u/wilytemptress 13h ago edited 11h ago
This! I use Due on Receipt for all invoices I send because I’ll be damned if I tracking every customers random terms. I’m not expecting to be paid any sooner than 30 days.
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u/West_Coast_Buckeye 12h ago
Same. We're a medium sized non-profit.... unless you are penalizing us- everything gets net 30'd
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u/jshmoe866 11h ago
Yeah everything is net 30 until they follow up. If they follow up nicely it gets moved up the pile. Eventually you get in a rhythm so both teams know what to expect of the other.
No recurring invoice can be processed realistically net 0 nor should it, that’s bad control.
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u/Mangos4Zuko 16h ago
Especially when the invoice date is a week or two BEFORE they bother to send it. And then a couple days later they complain about the past due amount. I just chuckle now. Don't let it get ya down.
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u/NumbersNinjaCPA 16h ago
My client invoices "due upon receipt" knowing that it takes time for them go through the AP process. But it's a time sensitive industry, and we need the clients' AP departments to get off their butts and get the payments out. Occasionally we'll have a bigger client that wants 45 or 60 day terms, and sometimes we have to go along with it or not have them as a client.
But I lose patience easily when the 45 day terms get pushed to 55 because "they only pay on Thursdays." Well then, I guess you have to pay us the Thursday before the invoice is due. Blows their mind. LOL Which reminds me...I gotta follow up.
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u/KellyAnn3106 16h ago
I work for a mega-corp that decided to throw its weight around and change all of our vendors to 90 day payment terms. If the vendor didn't agree, they were replaced with someone else.
But for receivables, late fees kick in after one week.
They are taking "pay slow, collect fast" to heart.
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u/Intermediatehill 13h ago
I worked in a large manufacturing company that had this so aggressive that the net working capital was couple of billion negative. That was a bitch when the business started to contract...
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u/NumbersNinjaCPA 10h ago
I have another client that likes to pay just at the due date, unless there's a prompt pay. Always take the prompt pay.
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u/Agile-Fill-1889 5h ago
As someone who has worked at a place the exact opposite, I’d take the “pay slow, collect fast” over “We pay early and don’t care if we are paid late”.
Before the start up was bought by a listed company, I was told we had to squeezed by both sides in our industry. That was that.
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u/solarnuggets 15h ago edited 9h ago
I work for a company that does this and I just want to say on behalf of the ar team, we all know it’s fucking stupid and we’re being ran by morons. So apologies in advance.
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u/ugghhmo 16h ago
Due upon receipt for us is just a nicer way of telling our customer that they are COD. and in our particular system using this term instead of COD avoids having a big COD watermark print on the invoice.
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u/pboom5043 16h ago
That makes sense if you’re delivering an item somewhere. This is a service provided and then invoiced later. We have never missed a payment and have always paid via ACH. They email the invoice so I can’t just hand them cash (which I don’t have in hand anyways because it’s 2026 and not a saloon in 1852)
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u/Daisysnlilys 16h ago
CoD isn’t literally cash it’s payment upon delivery so you’d need the payment proof
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u/pboom5043 16h ago
Great, checks need to be signed by the owner (not always available) and would need to be mailed. I don’t have a cc. We don’t have wire info and ACHs take 24 hours. And they want to charge us a fee to pay them through QBO which I am not paying a fee to make it convenient for you
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u/Daisysnlilys 16h ago
Sounds like you guys need to find a new vendor then! Easy enough if communication with the owner doesn’t pay off
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u/l3theri0 16h ago
I just switch them all to Net 30 and keep paying them on those terms until someone says otherwise. In my experience, the vast majority of vendors that put Due Upon Receipt are unsophisticated, small businesses that probably don't even realize it's a setting they can change in their accounting system.
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u/Diligent-Variation51 8h ago
Some are so small and unsophisticated that they don’t HAVE an accounting system. The invoices come from a Word template and may be tracked in Excel.
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u/8days_a_week CPA (US) 16h ago
Same but we still send paper checks. So I get to send a lot of “ the check was mailed last week” emails :)
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u/irreverentnoodles Industry SaaS Edgelord 16h ago
Yea I ignore those and add them in per our agreement. If the signed agreement doesn’t say a specific net terms, it’s net 30 to me.
And if it does and it says due on receipt? I’m still taking a couple weeks because that is just onerous and obnoxious.
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u/TigerUSF Non-Profit 16h ago
It's bad enough as an accountant for a company. Worse as an individual , especially when we're all used to things like net 30.
I had a contractor at my house call me at like 4pm on a weekday saying he was done and wanted me there RIGHTFUCKINGTHEN to pay him!... then went absolutely psycho when I explained that not only was I at work and needed more than zero notice to leave, but also we hadn't even done ay sort of final walkthrough of the work which was substantial plumbing work.
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u/i_like_pretzel_day_ 14h ago
I see that a lot, guess I never take it as literal lol. Just means pay in next check run to me 🤷
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u/NotAShittyMod 16h ago
Does anyone else hate it when vendors payment terms are “due upon receipt”?
Hate it? No. I just do a quick translation from moron and put it in for 30 days.
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u/Simplemanmhwttg 16h ago
My former CEO's didn't give a shit about their terms lol. It got paid when it got paid, and our MSA/SOW/PO overrides that when you accept it.
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u/Forward_Zucchini9738 Human Verified 16h ago
We get tough guy collection tactics from vendors that haven't shipped an order yet that was net 30. Yes, we made that order 32 days ago. No, we are not going to pay you yet.
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u/godofallcorgis 14h ago
I just make sure they get paid in 30 days and if they call to complain, then we have the conversation about reasonable AP processing times.
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u/CrisscoWolf 15h ago
If they dont want to get paid when our process allows it they dont have to do business with us lol. Process time is a cost of doing business
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u/Beautiful-Fennel-983 11h ago
"Due upon receipt" is a bluff term. It means "you'll pay at Net 45 if I write Net 30, so I'm writing this instead." Nobody with an actual AP function reads it literally and no court does either, it gets read as a reasonable time, usually a week or two. If a 4:30pm invoice can't clear until the following week, that's a Bill.com problem, not a Karen problem.
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u/EndOfTheDream Graduate 16h ago
Too real. I have just started to ignore it, you’ll get paid within a week.
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u/OstrichMaximum6485 15h ago
You open with "it takes a week or two for payment to go out" and close with "you're getting paid the same week you sent the invoice." Those aren't the same thing. Which one is it?
Also "due upon receipt" is usually just the default term in whatever invoicing template they grabbed off the internet, not a demand that you cut a check in ten minutes.
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u/AfraidPressure0 13h ago
Literally just user error, it’s the default on some systems (reminders included) and they just don’t care to turn it off. The people who get upset about it are wild though, probably just don’t know what goes into fulfilling an invoice.
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u/ClumsyChampion ZZZ Seasonal Accountant 17h ago
I have due upon receipt invoicing for emergency situation where upfront payment is required. But that is either paid by cc or wire. And doesn’t go through AP process the regular way
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u/Lost_in_spreadsheets 16h ago
I don’t get many complaints about invoices that are “due on receipt”. We just pay them on our next scheduled processing day (usually once a week)
Two weeks is a pretty long time for processing an invoice.
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u/pmhc666 11h ago
This is the reason! If I put Due Upon Receipt, I certainly don't expect instant payment. I do hope that I'm put into the very next cheque run though. Those that are saying screw them, they're waiting 30 days don't seem to understand that if you put N30, odds are you'll be lucky to be paid in 45 - 60 days. If an invoice says Due Upon Receipt and the client is stretching that to 45-60, cut them off.
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u/Alycatgrl 10h ago
I’ve always paid net 15 or Net 30 depending on cash flow….never had an issue other than automated QB reminders being fired off.
The few true mom and pop vendors generally get paid before they leave the building.
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u/DogmaticParadigm87 10h ago
Can't speak for every vendor, but the usual fix on the sending side is swapping "upon receipt" for an actual date, since AP can schedule a date and can't schedule a mood.
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u/hideandsee Controller:snoo_tableflip::table_flip: 8h ago
Agree. I think it’s fine to put “due upon receipt” on the invoice, but they should really be waiting 2 weeks to check their AR report to see what’s up
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u/thatkindofparty CPA (US) 7h ago
They’re trying to manage their cash flow, same as you. My question is always going to be what does the contract or MSA say. Any place worth a shit is going to have a procurement team that proposes 60 or 90 day payment terms and then negotiates down from there. Now, if it’s construction contractors or something like that, then they’re gonna invoice you on a milestone basis and that’s par for the course.
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u/OpportunityWise3866 Senior Rev Accountant 6h ago
meanwhile my company has invoices due from customers for like 700+ days and then we just credit their invoices and let them sign a new contract as if they never agreed to the initial contract in the first place. :-) (or we literally credit and reinvoice just so the customer can have the date they want on their invoice <3)
God i hate my job lol
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u/As-amatterof-fact 5h ago
This should be done only for exceptional and urgent cases and those you must find ways to prioritize. Now you can call your colleague from purchasing or the approver responsible and ask them why the short payment terms, why is this one so urgent and important and where is the purchasing order.
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u/TheProfessionalEjit ACCA (UK) 1h ago
Have had a few, standard response is that I pay on the 20th of the month following unless someone can send me a signed agreement which states otherwise.
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u/Daisysnlilys 16h ago
Payment terms for a vendor should be noted somewhere in your files so if they are net0 then you should already have an agreement for these pay terms.
In industry experience If you need the services or inventory from the vendor then you’re agreeing to their payment terms.
Just a side note - people sending you those invoices are most likely in accounting so I’m a little confused with the “non-accounting people” terms?
Just some thoughts
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u/tonna33 16h ago
We have a wide range of vendors - so some sole-prop with the one guy doing it all, and then massive companies.
We just enter whatever terms they want when we set them up in our system. If they call, we let them know our pay run days are Thursdays. If it's work that needs to be paid right away, we will do one off payments, but for the most part they are good knowing when the payment will be made.
OP, though, makes it sound like their company doesn't do a good job of setting up the vendors/suppliers to avoid the repeated questions of when payment will be sent.
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u/pboom5043 16h ago
It’s a small business. Not every business has an accounting department
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u/Daisysnlilys 16h ago
If it’s a small business then they likely need the cash flow. If you know what the services are and have received those services prior to the invoice why would you not get a quote and have the payment ready?
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u/pboom5043 16h ago
The services aren’t used consistently. They are as needed and they vary wildly. There’s no standard to what is done or how much an invoice costs. I don’t know that they were used until the invoice comes through
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u/Lord_Gamaranth Staff Accountant 16h ago
Really depends on the vendor, I deal in property management and a lot of our smaller vendors are just the one guy who does it all.
We issue our payments at set intervals and inform the vendor of our schedule so they know it will only get paid after one of those dates
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u/Ok_Jello8972 14h ago
Small thing: "vendors payment terms" needs an apostrophe, vendors'. The rest is your rant, not my business.
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u/Wide_Helicopter_1309 17h ago
Especially love when they have automated reminders letting you know the invoice they just sent is past due