Setting Net 30 terms per buyer account

Not every buyer gets the same terms. A ten-year account might run Net 30 on trust, while a new one pays on receipt until they've earned otherwise. Here is how that distinction holds up once ordering moves off the phone.

Terms are already buyer-specific, informally

Most welding supply distributors already vary payment terms by account, even without a formal policy written down. A long-standing buyer gets Net 30 because they've always paid on time. A brand-new account pays on receipt until they've built a track record. A buyer who fell behind once gets moved to Net 15 until things settle. This isn't unusual — it's how credit actually gets managed in this business. The problem is that it usually lives in someone's memory, or a note in a filing cabinet, not anywhere a second person can check it.

What breaks when terms only exist in someone's head

When a buyer calls in an order, the person taking the call either knows that buyer's terms or has to go ask. If that person is out sick, or the buyer usually deals with someone else, the order gets taken without anyone confirming terms at all — and a Net 15 account quietly gets treated like Net 30, or a due-on-receipt account ships before payment because nobody flagged it. None of this is dishonesty; it's just terms that were never written anywhere a second person could see them.

Terms as an account setting, not a conversation

When a buyer has their own portal account, their terms are set once — Net 30, Net 15, due on receipt, whatever you've agreed — and every order they place carries that. A PO number and a payment term travel with the order the same way a price does. Nobody has to remember which of your forty buyers gets which terms, because the buyer's account already has the answer.

• Set once, applied automatically: terms live on the buyer's account, not in a note or a memory, so every order they place reflects them.
• No terms conversation mid-order: a buyer placing an order doesn't need to ask, and your team doesn't need to check.
• Terms travel with the order into accounting: a confirmed order carries its PO number and terms through to invoicing, instead of being re-confirmed by phone before the invoice goes out.

This is a settings problem, not a collections one

None of this changes who decides a buyer's terms or how you handle an account that pays late — that's still a call your team makes. What changes is where the answer lives once you've made it: on the buyer's account, visible to whoever takes the order, instead of somewhere only one person can find it. For a distributor running twenty or thirty active accounts, each on slightly different terms, that's the difference between a policy and a habit that depends on one person staying at their desk.

See how buyer accounts and terms are set up in SupplyDesk →