What does net 30 mean, and how do you get clients to pay on time?

Net 30 means the full balance is due within 30 days of the invoice date, and the same construction gives net 15, net 45, and net 60. A variant like 2/10 net 30 offers a 2 percent discount for payment within 10 days, which is an expensive discount to give annually but sometimes worth it for cash timing. Larger organizations frequently impose their own terms regardless of what your invoice says, and their accounts payable cycles run on fixed schedules, so an invoice that misses a cutoff by a day waits for the next run.

Late payment is the norm rather than an aberration, and treating it as a personal failing of individual clients leads to the wrong fixes. The structural ones work better. Invoice the day the work is delivered rather than at month end, since a week of delay is a week added to collection. Take a deposit, commonly a third to a half, on projects of any size, which both improves cash position and filters out clients who were never going to pay. State the payment terms and any late fee on the invoice itself and in the contract, because a late fee you never disclosed is unenforceable and one you did disclose is usually respected. Offer payment methods that are frictionless, since requiring a mailed check adds a week for no reason.

When an invoice does go late, escalate on a schedule rather than by mood: a polite automated reminder at the due date, a direct message a week later, then a phone call, which is markedly more effective than email because it reaches a person who must respond. Find out who actually processes payments, since the person who hired you is often not the person who pays you, and a misrouted invoice can sit for months. For genuinely delinquent accounts, options include stopping work, which should be reserved and stated in the contract, small claims court for amounts within the jurisdictional limit, and collections agencies, which typically take a substantial percentage. The best protection remains not extending large amounts of unsecured credit to clients you have not worked with before.