Payment terms

Payment terms answer one question: by when does the money have to arrive, and what does paying early save?

The terms themselves are shared master data. What they mean for one invoice — the due date, the discount deadline, the discounted amount — is worked out once and stamped onto that invoice, never read back off the master record.

That split is the whole idea.

The terms record

A payment term is a label plus three numbers: days until due, days the cash discount (Skonto) can be earned in, and the discount rate.

Only the net days are required; terms without a discount are the normal case. The two discount fields are a pair — set both or neither — and a discount deadline falling after the due date is rejected, because it would reward paying late.

The name is never printed. A document composes its own sentence from the numbers, so a name that drifts out of step with them cannot lie on paper.

How a document gets its terms

Terms are required on every sales document, and fill in from the customer first, then the profile, then not at all.

They are only ever proposed into an empty field. Terms picked by hand are kept. So put the common case on the profile and override it per customer.

Reaching the end of that chain is not an error. The document saves; it is refused at release.

What an invoice stamps

A sales order carries the terms and stops there — it agrees the rule but owes nothing yet.

An invoice owes, so it resolves the rule into four values of its own:

• the due date,
• the last day the discount can be earned,
• the rate granted,
• the gross total less that discount.

Skonto comes off the gross, which is how “2% Skonto” reads on a German invoice and what the customer actually transfers.

Why the dates never move

The two dates are deliberately blind to the amount. A date cannot depend on a sum, and tying them to the total would re-date the invoice on every line edit.

The discounted amount is the half that must move with the total, and it is worked out separately for exactly that reason.

How the money moves is a separate answer

Terms say when. The payment method says how, and it sits beside the terms on every sales document, reaching it by the same cascade — customer first, then profile.

Methods are records, not a fixed list: PayPal, Kreditkarte and Nachnahme are ones a workspace adds. Each names the standard means it settles by — transfer, card, cash or online payment service — because that is what the e-invoice transmits and what decides whether the printed document carries a bank account, and several methods share one. A wallet and a card scheme are the same means to the standard and different methods to the business, which is the whole reason the method is a record and the means is a value on it.

The two are confused often enough to be worth stating: paying before dispatch is not a method. It is terms of nought days, and the money still arrives by whichever method is named.

Setting them up is Payment methods.

Why the rate is copied

The stamped rate duplicates a number already on the terms record, on purpose. It is the rate the invoice went out with, and the e-invoice transmits it verbatim.

Editing a terms record agrees new business; it does not re-date old paper. An invoice issued under 2% in 14 days keeps 2% in 14 days afterwards. This is what a document freezes applied to terms.

Setting terms up is Payment terms.