Payment terms that get you paid

You put "Net 30" on the invoice because that is what the template said and because a contractor you know uses it. The job burned $2,300 of material you already paid for at the supply house, plus two days of your own time. The customer will pay somewhere around day 40. For five and a half weeks, you are the one lending money.

Payment terms are not politeness. They decide how much of your own cash sits inside other people's projects, and for how long. Choosing them job by job costs you nothing and changes that number more than anything else on the invoice.

The five terms, and when money actually lands

There are only a handful of real options. The difference between the due date and the day funds clear is the part templates never mention.

Those right-hand ranges are what to budget for, not a promise. Residential customers paying by card or ACH tend to land at the fast end. Commercial accounts that run check batches land at the slow end, and a Net 30 invoice that misses a check run by one day waits for the next one.

The number that decides it

Term selection is one calculation, and it is not about the invoice total. It is about what left your account before the customer's money arrived.

Cash you finance  = materials paid + payroll paid + subs paid − deposit received
Days you finance  = first outlay → cleared payment

Run it on a real job. A bathroom remodel at $18,000:

Invoice at completion on Net 30 and you carry $8,600 for roughly seven weeks from the first order. Take a deposit at signing and bill the rough-in as a milestone, and the peak exposure drops to a few thousand for a couple of weeks. Same customer, same price, same profit — a completely different amount of your money at risk.

Now run it on a drain cleaning at $340 with nothing bought ahead. Exposure is zero, the job is over in ninety minutes, and chasing terms is pointless. Take the card at the truck.

That is the whole framework. Low exposure and a short job means collect on the spot. High exposure or a long job means split the money into pieces that arrive while you are still spending. How you size that first piece is its own decision, covered in the deposit guide; how you break a long job into phases is covered in the progress billing guide.

What the customer will actually accept

Exposure tells you what you want. The customer type tells you what is available.

Homeowner, first job together. Due on completion. Card or ACH before you pack up, or a deposit and a balance if you are buying material. There is no norm forcing you to extend credit to someone you met last week.

Repeat homeowner who has always paid. Net 15 costs you almost nothing and reads as trust. Keep due-on-completion for anything where you fronted material.

General contractor. Expect 30 days minimum, often longer, because many subcontract agreements tie your payment to when the GC gets paid by the owner. Read that clause before you price the job, and expect retainage held back on larger contracts. Lien rights are your real protection here, and both have their own guides.

Property manager or HOA. They usually pay from a check run on a fixed schedule, twice a month or monthly. Ask which dates. An invoice submitted two days before the cutoff gets paid two weeks sooner than one submitted two days after, with identical terms.

Commercial and public work. Many require a purchase order number, and an invoice missing that number sits in a queue instead of going into the payment cycle. A number of states have prompt-payment statutes that set deadlines on public projects and sometimes private ones, with interest on late payments. What they cover varies a lot, so check your state's statute or ask a construction attorney rather than assuming a rule exists.

Wording that makes the term stick

"Net 30" is jargon that invites its own interpretation. Write terms that leave nothing to argue about.

• Put the calendar date on it. "Due September 22, 2026" beats "Net 30." Nobody has to count, and nobody gets to count from the day they opened the email.
• Say what starts the clock. Invoice date, completion date, or delivery of materials — pick one and write it. This is where most disputes over a "late" invoice actually come from.
• List accepted methods. Check, ACH, card, and whether a card carries a processing fee. Surcharging is governed by card network rules and by state law, and both have changed, so confirm before adding a fee line.
• Agree the term before the work, not on the invoice. A term the customer first sees on the bill is a request. A term in the estimate or contract they signed is an agreement. The same goes for a late fee: it has to exist in the signed document to be worth anything.
• Watch state limits on money up front. Some states cap what a residential contractor can collect before starting. Check your state licensing board before you write a large deposit into a contract.

Where the term lives after you choose it

Once you have decided that remodels get a deposit and milestones while service calls get paid at the truck, the work is making the decision show up on the paperwork every time. In DoneQuote, the terms sit on the estimate the customer approves, so the schedule you chose is the one they agreed to — not something they read for the first time when the bill arrives. The number you calculated stays the number that goes out.

Change one term first

Do not redo everything at once. Take the job type that ties up the most cash — usually the one with the biggest material bill — and change only that: add a deposit, or move it from Net 30 to Net 15. Watch what it does to your bank balance over two months and adjust if customers push back.