Payment terms
Overview
A payment term bundles the net period and the early-payment discount tiers into a named piece of master data — "2 % within 14 days, net 30", for instance. It is pre-set on the customer or supplier and carried from there into the document.
What matters is what happens when the invoice is finalised: the term is frozen there. A later change on this page does not alter issued invoices. That is not a technical limitation but the precondition for an invoice being a document rather than a window onto today's master data.
Core tasks
Create a term. New payment term requires a label and the conditions. The list shows label, the condition in short form, the scope, the default marker and the active state.
Choose the scope. Three options: Sales, Purchasing or Sales & purchasing. The scope decides where the term is offered at all.
Set the default. The term marked as default is proposed on new customers and suppliers. It can be overridden on the individual partner.
Fields in detail
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Key termKey | yes | text, max. 50 characters | The technical identifier. Do not change it once documents refer to it. |
Name name | yes | text, max. 120 characters | What the term is called in the selection, say "14 days net, 2% discount within 7 days". |
Net days netDays | no | 0 to 3650 | After how many days the invoice falls due. 0 means due immediately. The system calculates the due date from it — and the whole dunning process hangs on that. |
Discount tiers discounts | no | list of days and percentages | Within which deadline which discount applies. Several tiers are allowed ("3% in 7 days, 2% in 14"). Payment matching recognises a discount deduction as justified instead of reporting it as a shortfall. |
Scope scope | no | sales, purchase, both | Where the term is offered. Your own payment terms with suppliers are different from the ones you give customers. |
Document text documentText | no | text | The wording that appears on the document. It is what the customer reads — which is why a full sentence belongs here, not the shorthand from the name. |
Default isDefault | no | yes/no | What is proposed when the customer has nothing on file. |
Order sortOrder | no | number | Position in the selection. |
Active active | no | yes/no | Off means no longer selectable; existing documents keep their term. |
Settings & permissions
- Permission
platform.settings.manage. Without it the page is unreachable. - Documents already issued stay unchanged — including when a term is deleted.
- Due dates and discounts are calculated centrally. Every module uses the same procedure; there
is no second way of calculating elsewhere.
- Deactivate rather than delete when a term is being phased out: it stays readable on existing
partners but is no longer newly assigned.
FAQ & troubleshooting
The due date on an invoice does not match the term. Check when the invoice was finalised. It carries the term as it stood then, not as it stands today.
A term does not appear on a supplier. Check the scope. A term scoped to Sales is not offered in purchasing.
No discount is being taken. Check whether the term contains discount tiers at all and whether payment fell within the period.
We need a different term for one particular customer. Set it directly on the customer. The default here is a proposal, not a constraint.