If you find your business dealing with negative cash flow, it’s time to get creative. Prompt payment discounts (also known as settlement or cash discounts) are offered to credit customers to encourage prompt payment of their account. It is not guaranteed that customers will take advantage of prompt payment discounts at the point of sale as it is dependent upon whether or not the credit customer pays within the settlement window. The invoicing process is a crucial accounting task vital to your business’s operations and cash flow.

Offering discounts cuts into your profits (though the benefits of early payment are often still worth it if your business has tight margins). If you opt for static discounts, customers may also take advantage of static discount terms attached to an invoice, deducting the discount without actually paying early. Most businesses do not offer early payment discounts, so there is no need to create an allowance for sales discounts. Another common sales discount is “2% 10/Net 30” terms, which allows a 2% discount for paying within 10 days of the invoice date, or paying in 30 days. When customers regularly take advantage of early payment discounts, it can start to cut into your operating margin. If you determine that offering a payment discount is necessary to remain competitive, consider pricing your product or service to account for future early payment discounts.

Turn your outstanding invoices into cash.

If this happens a lot in your business, it might be best to consider other ways to reward good customers and just eliminate the early payment discount. There are three types of early payment discounts that may be offered, and they can vary from business to business. Though any payment discount can be negotiated between parties, these are the three most common early payment discount options. In order for the accounts payable staff to operate efficiently, it is helpful to process the checks written to vendors only on specified days each month. Writing the checks on pre-announced days will hopefully discourage the need for “rush” checks and allow the accounts payable processing to be more efficient.

If you don’t have a lot of late-paying customers, offering a cash discount may not be necessary, but if you do, offering a cash discount may be a good solution. Traditionally, most prompt payment discounts are initiated by the supplier and offer a discount between 1% to 5% https://www.bookstime.com/articles/part-time-bookkeeping if payment is made early. But a new method, dynamic discounting, is also gaining in popularity that can be initiated by either the buyer or the seller, with terms agreed upon before invoicing. Early payment discounts are far more cost-effective than invoice factoring.

What Are Early Payment Discounts? Here’s the Complete Guide

An early payment discount―also called a prompt payment or cash discount―is a reduction in an invoice balance when it’s paid before the due date. It provides an incentive for customers to pay their bills before they’re due. Some companies offer an early pay discount to their customers if they pay the invoice early. For example, if the invoice is due within 30 days, then the company might offer a 5% discount if they pay within 10 days. If they don’t pay within 10 days, they won’t get the discount, so they might ass well wait to pay until 30 days comes. An early payment discount or cash discount is offered as a means to get your customers to pay their bills a bit earlier.

Find out how much other businesses charge for similar services or products. You may choose to offer a low enough early payment discount to stay competitive. Calculating an invoice early payment discount is easy, but it does require a little bit of math (unless you use accounting software). Let’s say you want to give customers a 2% discount if they pay their invoice within 10 days instead of the normal due date of 30 days.

Accounting for Early Pay Discounts: Gross Method

Although she’s a good customer, Donna always waits until the very last minute to pay her bill. Browse hundreds of articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools, techniques, and best practices. Many readers tell us they would have paid consultants for the advice in these articles. Helping organizations spend smarter and more efficiently by automating purchasing and invoice processing. Harold Averkamp (CPA, MBA) has worked as a university accounting instructor, accountant, and consultant for more than 25 years.

To do this, click on the gear icon on the top right part of your dashboard, select Account and Settings, and then choose Sales. Receivable factoring may not be an affordable option, but it can be a solution to recover overdue accounts. Factoring will deduct a factoring fee and factor’s holdback from the total amount of receivables factored.

A small discount for early payment may be all it takes to build loyalty among your clients. If, based on past experience, J Co did not expect the customer to make the payment within 14 days, then accounting for early payment discounts the full $2,000 would have been recorded as revenue in the first instance. If the payment was made within the 14-day period after all, this would require an adjustment to reduce revenue by $60.

Early payment discounts can be beneficial for both buyers and sellers. Buyers get the benefit of paying less for items purchased, while sellers get the benefit of early payment, avoiding a high accounts receivable balance as well as time-consuming collection activity. Let’s assume that a company sells goods on credit and offers an early payment discount expressed as 1/10, net 30. This means that a customer is allowed to deduct 1% of the invoice amount, if payment is made within 10 days (instead of paying the full amount in 30 days). Therefore, an invoice of $1,000 with terms of 1/10, net 30 means that the $1,000 obligation will be settled in full for $990 if it is paid within 10 days.