Had a chat with a guy from Germany about payment terms that totally flipped my approach

I was complaining to this German guy I met on a freelance forum about how US clients always drag their feet paying. He said in Germany they just send a bill with 'pay within 14 days' and that's it, no questions asked. Hit me hard because here I was letting people take 45+ days when I could just... set a firm deadline. Last month I tried it with a new client from Ohio and they paid in 11 days flat. Has anyone else found that foreign clients are way more strict about their own terms but expect us to be pushovers?

4 comments

4 Comments

angela72810d ago

See I gotta disagree with this whole mindset. Setting a hard 14 day deadline works fine when you're dealing with Germans or other Europeans who actually respect business agreements but American clients are a whole different animal. If I start demanding 14 day payment terms I'll just lose half my clients to someone who's willing to wait 45 days. Small business owners especially rely on that float time to keep their own cashflow going. You caught a good client but that doesn't mean every random person from Ohio is gonna pay you in 11 days. Most of them will drag it to 30 regardless of what your invoice says because they have their own bills to pay first. Being flexible is what keeps you competitive in this market and acting like a hardass about payment dates is just shooting yourself in the foot.

johnson.eva10d ago

A 14 day payment term works so well in Germany partly because they've got this whole system of direct debit mandates (Lastschrift) that makes it easy to just pull the money on the exact due date. @parker_webb you hit it perfectly about accepting bad treatment. What nobody mentioned is that our own US banks make it harder to enforce those terms too. Like I tried a hard 10 day net with a client in Texas who ignored it completely. Then I found out you can actually set up automated recurring invoices through most platforms now which changes the game completely. My buddy runs a landscaping crew in Portland and he started using instant payment links right on the invoice (instead of waiting for checks). That one change cut his average payment time from 38 days to 19 days without him having to fight anyone over terms.

troyc1710d ago

That whole thing about accepting bad treatment really does spill into other parts of life, doesnt it. Look at how we put up with slow customer service or hidden fees from banks and phone companies, just because that's how it's always been. The German guy probably grew up in a system where people just mean what they say in a bill, so he doesnt even think about being taken advantage of. Over here we're so used to negotiating everything down to the last detail that we forget a firm offer is actually a valid option too. It's like we've been trained to expect the worst from each other in business, and then we act surprised when it happens. Maybe the real lesson is that having clear boundaries from the start actually makes everyone more comfortable, not less.

parker_webb10d ago

Honestly it's like we're trained to accept bad treatment everywhere until someone shows us it doesn't have to be that way.