Due on Receipt
Due on receipt means payment is expected the moment the client gets the invoice — no fixed date, no grace window. It sounds firm but gives a client nothing concrete to be held to, which is why a real date usually gets you paid faster.
What it means
It reads as urgent, but it’s actually vaguer than Net 7 or Net 14, not stricter. “Due on receipt” doesn’t say when the clock started, so a client who pays two weeks later hasn’t technically broken any stated deadline — there wasn’t one written down to break.
It works fine for small cash-and-carry jobs where you’re handed payment on the spot anyway. For anything invoiced and sent, a specific date — even a short one, like Net 3 — gives you something concrete to point to in a reminder, and gives the client something concrete to plan around.
A one-hour callout marked “due on receipt” gets paid on the spot by card before you leave — that’s the use case it actually suits. The same wording on an emailed invoice for a bigger job just leaves both sides guessing what “immediately” means in practice.
Using “due on receipt” on every invoice by habit, then being surprised when a follow-up email a week later reads as premature — there was no stated date it was actually overdue against.
See also
Where this shows up
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