Net 15 vs Net 30 vs Net 60: Choosing Invoice Payment Terms

Most freelancers put Net 30 on their invoices because Net 30 is what was on the template. It is a reasonable default. It is also a decision worth making deliberately, because the gap between Net 15 and Net 60 is 45 days of your money sitting in someone else's account, and for a small business that gap is the difference between comfortable and anxious.

What the terms mean#

"Net" refers to the net amount — the full sum due, after any discounts, with no deduction. The number is the count of days you are giving the client to pay it.

Two ambiguities hide in that table and cause most of the disputes.

Calendar days or business days? Almost always calendar. If you mean business days, say so explicitly, because nobody will assume it.

From what date? The invoice date, by convention. But clients sometimes treat the clock as starting when their accounts-payable system received the invoice, or when the work was delivered. Over a 30-day term, that distinction can be a fortnight.

The fix for both is the same and takes no effort: print the actual calendar due date on the invoice. "Net 30 — due 14 September 2026" cannot be misread.

What each term is actually for#

Due on receipt#

Honest about the intent, and mostly ineffective. Even a client who wants to pay immediately has to schedule the payment, and any client with a finance department will simply route it into the next payment run regardless.

Genuinely useful in one situation: as a signal on a final invoice to a client you do not intend to work with again.

Net 7 and Net 15#

Appropriate when your client pays you personally rather than through a system — small businesses, other freelancers, individuals. In that context there is no procurement cycle to fight, and a 15-day term is completely normal.

Also appropriate for deposits and milestone payments, where the payment is a condition of the next stage of work starting rather than a bill for work completed.

Where it backfires: with a client whose payment run is fortnightly or monthly, Net 15 does not get you paid faster. It gets you an invoice that is technically overdue every single month. That is corrosive. Once "overdue" is the normal state of your invoices, the word stops carrying any weight, and you have lost the ability to escalate meaningfully when something is genuinely late.

Net 30#

The default across most of the commercial world, and a reasonable one. Long enough to fit almost any approval process, short enough that a delay past it is visibly a delay.

If you are not sure, Net 30 is the right answer. It is what most clients expect, requires no negotiation, and gives you a clean basis for chasing at day 31.

Net 45 and Net 60#

Common when working with large enterprises, and often not negotiable — a global company's standard vendor terms are set centrally and the person who hired you cannot change them.

Understand what you are accepting. Net 60 means that work done in the first week of January might be paid in mid-March. If you also pay subcontractors on Net 30, you are financing the gap out of your own pocket.

Note for UK freelancers: under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, a payment period longer than 60 days in a business-to-business contract is only valid if it is expressly agreed and is not grossly unfair to the supplier. For public authorities the limit is 30 days. So a Net 90 term imposed on you is not automatically enforceable.

2/10 Net 30 and early-payment discounts#

"Take 2% off if you pay within 10 days, otherwise pay in full at 30 days." It sounds like a small concession. Run the arithmetic.

You are paying 2% to get your money 20 days early. There are roughly 18.25 such periods in a year. That is an effective annualised cost of about 36% — considerably worse than almost any borrowing you could arrange instead.

Early-payment discounts make sense as a deliberate, temporary cash-flow measure. As a standing policy on every invoice, they are an expensive habit.

The real question: what do your clients cost you?#

Choosing terms is not really about the number. It is about matching the term to how the client actually pays.

Ask, once, at the start of an engagement: "What are your standard payment terms, and how does your payment run work?" It is an entirely normal question, it takes one email, and the answer tells you more than any term you could print.

The answers cluster:

• "We pay on receipt / within a week." Small client, no system. Net 15 is fine.
• "Our standard terms are Net 30." Take it. Get the invoice in early in the month.
• "Net 60, we can't change it." Often true. Price accordingly, or ask for a deposit instead of arguing.
• "We run payments on the 25th, and invoices need to be in by the 15th." This is the most valuable answer you can get, and it has nothing to do with your terms. Getting the invoice in on the 14th rather than the 16th is worth a month.

That last case is the point. With most organisations of any size, when you invoice matters more than what term you put on it.

Getting paid faster, term aside#

Invoice immediately. The single largest source of delay in freelance payment is the freelancer waiting until the end of the month to raise the invoice. A Net 30 invoice sent on completion beats a Net 15 invoice sent three weeks later.

Send it to the right address. Ask whether there is an ap@ or invoices@ mailbox. Sending to your project contact adds a forwarding step and a delay every time.

Get the PO number. In any organisation with procurement, an invoice that does not match a purchase order does not get rejected — it just fails to match, and no one tells you.

Take deposits. For new clients or projects over a certain size, 30–50% up front is standard and reasonable. It also filters out the clients who were never going to pay.

Make paying easy. Bank details in full. A payment link if you have one. The invoice number as the reference.

Agree late fees in advance. In the contract, not on the invoice. In the UK, statutory interest applies automatically; in the US it depends on your contract and your state's usury rules.

Chase on a schedule. Decide in advance what happens at day 31, 45 and 60, and then do it. Most late payments are not disputes — they are administrative drift, and a polite specific email fixes them.

What overdue actually costs#

Some numbers, so the abstraction has weight. Assume a freelancer billing £5,000 a month.

That last row is the realistic one, because terms are the promise and payment behaviour is the reality. Roughly £14,000 of work delivered and not yet paid for is a meaningful amount of working capital for a one-person business to be lending out for free.

This is why deposits matter more than terms, and why a client who pays Net 60 reliably is genuinely easier to work with than one who promises Net 15 and pays whenever.

Putting terms on the invoice#

Three things belong there:

1. The term itself: "Payment terms: Net 30"
2. The calendar due date: "Due 14 September 2026"
3. The consequence: "Statutory interest under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 applies to overdue amounts" (UK) or "A late fee of 1.5% per month applies to overdue balances, as per our agreement dated 3 July 2026" (US)

That third line only works if it was agreed beforehand. A late fee announced for the first time on the invoice is not a term of the contract.

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Our free invoice generator calculates the due date from your chosen term automatically, so the calendar date is always on the document.

Related: what should be included in a US invoice, the best invoice format for UK freelancers, and how to create a professional invoice.

General information, not legal or financial advice. Late-payment rules differ by country and change. See our disclaimer.