Does net 30 mean 30 calendar days or 30 business days?

Calendar days, by trade convention, unless the document says otherwise — and most documents say nothing at all, which is how the argument starts. Two related gaps are worth closing in the same sentence. First, spell out "thirty (30) calendar days" rather than leaving it to convention. Second, say what happens when the count lands on a weekend or a bank holiday: payment on the preceding business day is better for you, payment on the following business day is what a client will ask for, and either is better than a silent contract in which the answer is whatever the payment run does. Federal contracting takes the opposite approach to silence and writes the whole thing down, which is why the rules discussed on this page are worth reading even if you never invoice an agency.

The client's purchase order says net 60 but my proposal said net 30. Which one applies?

Usually a question about the order of precedence rather than about the two numbers. Most master agreements contain a clause ranking the documents — agreement, then statement of work, then exhibits, then purchase orders — and an entire agreement clause saying the signed papers supersede earlier discussions, which is often fatal to a proposal that was never attached. A purchase order issued under an existing MSA is generally a mechanism for ordering work rather than a place to renegotiate terms, but that depends entirely on what the MSA says. Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code has a well-known rule about conflicting forms, and it governs the sale of goods, so reaching for it to settle a dispute about a design retainer is a mistake. Find the precedence clause, read it, and if the two documents really do conflict, put it to a lawyer licensed where the contract says disputes are heard before you invoice on the assumption that your number won.

Is "due on receipt" enforceable?

It is a payment term like any other, and the practical problem is not enforceability but that it gives you nothing to count to. A term with no day count produces no calculable due date, which means no clean answer to "how many days overdue is this?" — the question every later step in a collections process is built on. If you want the money before or at delivery, the honest structure is a deposit or a payment-on-delivery milestone written into the agreement, not two words on the face of an invoice. If you want to keep the phrase for small jobs, pair it with a backstop: payable on receipt, and in any event no later than fifteen (15) calendar days after the invoice date.

Does the Prompt Payment Act help me if I'm subcontracting on a federal job?

Not directly, in most cases. The Act runs between the government and the contractor it has a contract with, so if you are hired by a prime contractor, your right to be paid comes from your subcontract rather than from 31 U.S.C. chapter 39. There are two adjacent rules worth knowing. Federal construction contracts require the prime to include a clause paying subcontractors no later than 7 days from receipt of payment from the government, with an interest penalty for failing to (FAR 52.232-27). And outside construction, agencies are directed to pay small business contractors, and primes who subcontract with them, with a goal of 15 days after receipt of a proper invoice, with the prime passing that acceleration on to small business subcontractors within 15 days and without charging for it (FAR 32.009-1). Both read on 18 August 2026. Whether either reaches your particular subcontract is a question for someone who can read it.

Net 15 vs Net 30: What the Payment Clock Counts From

Invoice 0341 went out on 3 March, marked net 30. The money arrived on 22 April.

Fifty days. And nobody at the client was late — not the producer who commissioned the work, not the accounts payable clerk, not the finance director who signs off the payment run. Every one of them met their deadline. They were simply not counting from the day I was counting from.

That is the entire subject. Net 30 is not a promise about thirty days. It is a count, and a count needs a day zero — which is either something the two of you agreed or, far more often, something neither of you ever mentioned. Move the day zero and the same three words push the due date six weeks further out, landing ten weeks after the work was delivered, with nobody in breach of anything.

Nothing here is advice about your agreement — I am not a lawyer, and the about page sets out what that limit means in practice. What follows is trade practice first, then the one body of law that troubles to define a starting point, then four sentences to hand to whoever drafts your contracts. The rules quoted below were read on 18 August 2026 and each link goes to the issuing body's own text, so you can see for yourself whether one has moved since.

What "net" means, and what "due on receipt" doesn't

"Net" is the older half of the phrase and has nothing to do with time. It means the full amount with no discount taken, and it survives from terms written as 2/10 net 30 — two per cent off if you pay within ten days, otherwise the whole sum within thirty. The number that follows is a count of days. Calendar days, unless the document says business days, which it almost never does.

Due on receipt is a different kind of animal. It is not a term with a count; it is an instruction, and it quietly assumes a human being opens the invoice and decides to pay it. Send it into a company that runs accounts payable software and it has to be converted into a term code with a computable due date, which makes it a zero-day term, which means the invoice is already overdue on the day it is keyed in. An invoice born overdue does not jump the queue. It joins the same run as everything else, and it has given up the one useful thing a due date provides: a number you can point at when you ask where the money is.

There is also less law underneath all of this than people assume. Where a contract says nothing at all about when payment falls due, most US states supply no general answer for services. The Uniform Commercial Code does have a default — unless otherwise agreed, payment is due at the time and place at which the buyer is to receive the goods (UCC 2-310(a): uniform text, and as enacted at N.Y. UCC 2-310, both read on 18 August 2026) — but Article 2 governs the sale of goods, and a rebrand is not goods. A small number of states have now written a fallback specifically for freelance work, thirty days after completion where the contract names no date; those, and the thresholds that decide whether they reach you at all, are covered in the last section of the nine clauses that decide whether you get paid.

Four places the clock can start, and one that isn't a clock at all

Take a single job. Delivered and invoiced on 3 March 2026, net 30, no other wording. Here is what that produces depending on which event the client's process treats as day zero.

Day zero is…	The event	Due date	Days from delivery
Invoice date	You send it	2 April	30
Receipt	It reaches the person who enters it, 12 March	11 April	39
Acceptance	The client approves the work, 24 March	23 April	51
Month end (net 30 EOM)	31 March, then count	30 April	58
The payment run	The 30 April date above meets a cheque run held on the 15th	15 May	73

Nothing in that table is sharp practice. Each line is an ordinary arrangement that somebody uses, and the bottom line is more than double the top one.

Receipt, and the gap in front of it

Between the day you press send and the day the invoice exists inside the client's system there is a stretch of time you cannot see. The invoice goes to a producer, the producer is on a shoot, and nine days later it gets forwarded to the address that actually processes it.

If your terms run from receipt, those nine days are free to the client. If they run from the invoice date, they are free to you. The wording is one preposition apart and the money is nine days apart, which is why the second question in any kickoff should be where invoices go — a named mailbox, a portal, or a person.

The word "proper", which is a reset button

Plenty of agreements do not just say receipt. They say receipt of a proper or valid invoice, and then define what proper means: a purchase order number, a cost centre, the client's own entity name, sometimes a timesheet attached. Miss one and the count has never started.

Whether anyone tells you is a separate matter. Federal agencies are obliged to: an improper invoice must be returned "as soon as practicable after receipt, but no later than 7 days after receipt", identifying all defects that prevent payment and specifying all reasons the invoice is not proper (5 CFR 1315.4(c)(2), read on 18 August 2026). A commercial client is under no such obligation and typically has no deadline at all. Meanwhile the count you believe is running has never started, and nothing on your side of the transaction says so.

Acceptance, which can stop being a clock entirely

Net 30 from acceptance is the term that most often turns into no term. If nothing obliges the client to accept or reject within a fixed window, the trigger for your thirty days is an event they choose whether and when to cause.

Whatever you settle on for the number of days, this is the sentence that decides whether the number means anything, and it lives in the contract rather than on the invoice: a review window, a rejection that has to be in writing and specific about which criteria were missed, and a line saying silence past the window counts as acceptance.

The payment calendar, which is not about your invoice at all

The last two rows of that table are not really terms. They are the client's finance calendar.

Net 30 EOM means thirty days after the end of the month in which the invoice was issued, so an invoice dated the 3rd gets almost a free month before its count begins, while one dated the 28th barely notices. MFI, written as 15 MFI or 25 MFI, means a fixed day in the following month. Underneath either of those sits the payment run: the fortnightly or monthly date on which the company actually moves money. A due date landing the day after a monthly run waits for the next one.

None of this is hidden. It is simply never volunteered, because on their side of the desk it is not a negotiation, it is Tuesday.

Federal practice at least writes that calendar down instead of leaving you to infer it. Agencies are directed to pay "no more than seven days prior to the payment due date, but as close to the due date as possible" (5 CFR 1315.4(j)), and the receipt that starts the count is receipt by the designated agency office, annotated by that office at the time it arrives (1315.4(b)(1)(i), both read on 18 August 2026). Paying early is a deviation there, not a kindness. A commercial payment run is the same instinct without the rulebook, and without anybody obliged to tell you which day it falls on.

The one place where the starting point is written down

Federal contracting is the exception. It is a fully worked example of the thing your own contract leaves blank, which is why it is here rather than because you are ever likely to bill an agency.

Under the Prompt Payment Act (31 U.S.C. chapter 39) and its rules, the due date on most federal supply and service contracts is the later of two events: the 30th day after the designated billing office receives a proper invoice, and the 30th day after government acceptance of the supplies or services (FAR 52.232-25, read on 18 August 2026). Two dates, named, with a tie-break. Compare that to a contract that says "Net 30" and stops.

Then the government does the thing almost no commercial client does — it puts a limit on its own acceptance step. For the sole purpose of computing an interest penalty, acceptance is deemed to occur constructively on the 7th day after the contractor delivers or performs, unless a longer period is written into the contract. And a longer one is not free: the contracting officer has to document the justification for it in the contract file, and extended acceptance periods "must not be a routine agency practice" (FAR 32.904(b)(1)(ii)(B), read on 18 August 2026; the constructive-acceptance rule itself also sits in the clause at FAR 52.232-25(a)(5)). Delivery starts a clock whether or not anyone looks at the work.

The "proper invoice" definition is the part worth stealing outright. FAR 52.232-25 lists what an invoice must contain: contractor name and address, invoice date and number, contract or authorisation number, a description with quantity, unit price and extended price, shipping and payment terms, the name and address of whom to pay, a contact for defective-invoice notices, the taxpayer identification number where required, banking details for electronic funds transfer where required, and anything else the contract demands. Put those on every commercial invoice you send and you remove most of the excuses for an invoice being bounced back to you in week three.

The last piece is interest, and it is automatic. Late payment accrues an interest penalty without the contractor having to ask for it, at a rate the Treasury sets twice a year and publishes in the Federal Register — 4-3/4 per cent for the period from 1 July 2026 through 31 December 2026 (Federal Register, 9 July 2026, read on 18 August 2026). Small business contractors get a further push: civilian agencies are to pay them, and primes who subcontract with them, with a goal of 15 days after receipt of a proper invoice, and the Defense Department works to a rule of its own (FAR 32.009-1, read on 18 August 2026).

None of that reaches the freelancer hired by the agency that was hired by the agency. It is a drafting model, not a right you have — and nothing on this page can tell you whether a contract you have actually signed contains anything like it. That answer comes from counsel admitted in whatever state the agreement picks to govern it.

Wording that removes the ambiguity

Four sentences, roughly in this shape, do most of the work. Treat them as a starting point for a conversation with your own lawyer rather than as a form to paste in and sign, because how any of it reads depends on the rest of the agreement it lands in.

The count and its origin. Payment is due within thirty (30) calendar days of the date of Contractor's invoice. Where the due date falls on a weekend or public holiday, payment is due on the preceding business day.

Deemed acceptance. Client shall accept or reject each Deliverable in writing within ten (10) business days of delivery, a rejection to identify the specific acceptance criteria not met. If Client does neither within that period, the Deliverable is deemed accepted.

A deadline on invoice defects. Client shall notify Contractor of any defect in an invoice within seven (7) days of receipt, identifying all defects. If Client does not, the invoice is treated as proper as of the date it was received.

No silent extension. Payment terms run from the invoice date. End-of-month, month-following-invoice and internal payment-run conventions do not extend the due date.

The fourth one is the sentence clients most often push back on, and the pushback is informative all by itself. A client who says "our runs are on the 15th and we cannot change that" has just given you the real number, and you can price the job or set the milestones around it. A client who says nothing and signs it is a client whose accounts payable department is about to discover a term nobody told them about, which is its own kind of problem.

Silence does not get filled the same way everywhere. For commercial transactions in the EU, where no payment period was fixed, interest becomes payable automatically 30 calendar days after the client receives the invoice, along with a flat recovery fee of EUR 40 per late invoice and reasonable further recovery costs above that (Your Europe, late payment, read on 18 August 2026). For services in most US states there is no comparable backstop, which is exactly why these four sentences have to carry the weight on their own.

Choosing a number, and what it's actually worth

Due on receipt works with one kind of client: an owner-operator with a bank app and no procurement process. For anyone else, ask for a deposit instead. Money before the work starts is a structure; money "on receipt" is a hope with no date attached.

Net 15 is realistic with small studios and direct clients who pay by transfer. It is close to meaningless with a company that runs a monthly cycle — they will agree to it, because agreeing costs them nothing, and then pay on their run. Asking what the run is tells you more than negotiating the number does.

Net 30 is the default, and the argument is rarely about the thirty. It is about the four starting points above.

Net 45 and net 60 are a client telling you they have a cycle and you are going to finance part of it. That is a business decision rather than an insult, and the way to take it is with your eyes open about the size of the gap and the deposit or milestone structure that offsets it.

2/10 net 30 deserves arithmetic before gratitude. Giving up 2% to be paid twenty days earlier is 2.04% of what you would otherwise have received, for twenty days of money — a shade over 37% a year on a simple annualised basis. Sometimes that is a fair price for certainty. It is never a small discount.

Then there is a check almost nobody runs. If your client, or its parent, is a large UK company, its own payment performance is a matter of public record: large businesses there must report their average time to pay and the share of invoices paid later than agreed, and the figures are searchable. Across all reporters in 2025 the typical time to pay was 32 days — the department publishes medians rather than means — ranging from 21 days in finance and insurance to 45 days in manufacturing, with 15% of invoices paid late (Department for Business and Trade statistics, published 14 July 2026, read on 18 August 2026). Individual companies are searchable by name on the government's own payment practices service. If the multinational you are about to sign with has a UK entity, ten minutes there will tell you what its net 30 has historically meant in practice.

Before spending goodwill on the count itself, price it. Fifteen days of a $5,000 invoice, at the 4-3/4 per cent the Treasury currently pays on its own late bills, is worth about ten dollars. What a shorter term really buys is less time exposed to the client failing outright, and the instruments for that are a deposit and dated milestones rather than the gap between 30 and 15. Where the number will not move at all, the deemed acceptance window and the invoice defect deadline above are the cheaper asks, and they are the ones that decide whether the count ever starts.

Five questions before you agree to anything

Send these to the producer at kickoff, or to accounts payable directly. None of them asks anyone to negotiate. Each asks for a fact that already exists inside their system, which is why they tend to get answered when "what are your payment terms?" does not.

Does your system count from the invoice date, from receipt, or from approval?
If invoices go through a supplier portal, who registers me, and how long does that usually take?
Is there a purchase order, and which of its numbers has to be quoted?
What day of the month is the payment run?
Who notifies me if an invoice is rejected, and how quickly?

Whatever comes back, put it in writing in the agreement. An answer given verbally by a producer who leaves in June is not a payment term.

Late fees are the obvious next question and they are a separate one, turning less on what you write on the invoice than on what the signed agreement said before the work started and on what your state allows — a question this site takes up separately. What matters here is narrower: until the starting point is fixed, you cannot say how overdue anything is, and every rung of the collections ladder for an unpaid invoice is built on that number.

When wording is not the answer

Some of this is past the reach of a better sentence. A pay-when-paid clause makes your due date depend on a payment between two other parties, on a schedule you cannot see and cannot chase. A supplier portal's terms of use can carry payment language that appears nowhere in the agreement you signed. A purchase order and a master agreement can genuinely conflict, and which one wins turns on the order-of-precedence clause rather than on the two numbers. Those are worth an hour of a lawyer's time in the jurisdiction the agreement names — and worth it at redline stage, while the answer is still an edit rather than a dispute.

Everything above collapses into one exercise. Take the last contract you signed, find the payment clause, and work out which row of that table it actually produces. Most of the ones I have read produce none of them cleanly, and a blank is not neutral: it gets filled in by whoever runs the process, and that is never the person who sent the invoice.

Rules move and links rot. If a citation above no longer says what I have said it says, the contact page reaches me, and corrections get checked against the issuing body's text before they go up.