Selling B2B on Net Terms Without Betting the Business

Why wholesale buyers expect terms

If you sell to other businesses — retailers stocking your product, restaurants buying ingredients, contractors buying supplies — you'll quickly learn that "pay now with a card" is a deal-breaker for many of them. Businesses run on accounts payable cycles. They expect to receive goods, get an invoice, and pay it in 30, 45, or 60 days. Net terms aren't a perk; for serious wholesale, they're table stakes.

The catch is obvious: every invoice you issue on terms is unsecured credit you've extended to someone else's business. Get it wrong and you're financing customers who may not pay. The skill in B2B isn't deciding whether to offer terms — it's offering them with structure that protects you.

The three controls that make terms safe

1. A credit limit per account. Each company account should carry a maximum amount of outstanding credit you'll allow at any time. When a new terms order would push their balance over that limit, the order is blocked until they pay down what they owe. This is the single most important control: it caps your exposure to any one buyer regardless of how often they order.

In BestWebby, a company's creditLimitCents is checked before an order is accepted on terms. An order that would exceed the limit is rejected with a clear "over credit limit" response, not quietly let through. The cap is enforced by the system, not by someone remembering to check.

2. Terms length per account. Not every buyer earns the same terms. A new account might start at net-15 or prepay-only; a proven account that's paid on time for a year might earn net-60. Set netTermsDays per company so the invoice due date reflects the relationship, not a one-size-fits-all default.

3. Company-specific pricing. Wholesale isn't retail. Buyers expect tiered pricing, price lists, and volume breaks. The price on a B2B order should be resolved server-side from the company's assigned price list, then their wholesale tier, then your base price — never trusted from whatever the client sends. This prevents both honest mistakes and tampering, and it means a buyer always sees their negotiated price automatically.

How a terms order actually flows

When a company on net terms places an order, the sequence should be:

1. Resolve prices server-side for that specific buyer (price list → wholesale tier → base).
2. Check the credit limit against their current outstanding balance plus this order. Over limit? Block it.
3. Issue an invoice due in the company's terms window, rather than charging a card immediately.
4. Record everything — the invoice, the new outstanding balance, who approved it — in an audit trail.

That's exactly the path BestWebby's net-terms order endpoint takes. Because the invoice runs through the same billing engine as the rest of the platform, you get consistent due dates, reminders, and reconciliation — no parallel spreadsheet of who owes what.

Tax-exempt buyers and resale certificates

Many B2B buyers are tax-exempt — they're reselling your product and will charge tax to the end customer themselves. Mark those accounts tax-exempt so their invoices don't apply sales tax, and keep their resale certificate on file. Applying tax to a reseller's invoice is a fast way to create disputes and slow payment.

Getting paid: the part most guides skip

Offering terms is easy. Collecting is the discipline. A few practices that materially improve collection:

• Invoice immediately, not weekly. The terms clock should start the day goods ship, and the invoice should be in the buyer's inbox that day. Every day of delay is a day added to your effective payment cycle.
• Send reminders before the due date, not after. A friendly "due in 5 days" note prevents far more late payments than a chasing email after the fact.
• Tighten terms for slow payers automatically. If an account consistently pays late, lower their credit limit or shorten their terms. The system should make this a setting you change, not a confrontation you dread.
• Stop new orders at the limit, not at the lawsuit. The credit cap is doing its job when it blocks an order — that's a paid-down balance conversation, which is far easier than a collections one.

Start conservative, expand on proof

The safest way to grow a wholesale book is to start every new account tight and loosen on demonstrated behavior:

• New account: low credit limit, short terms (or prepay), standard price list.
• After several on-time payments: raise the limit, extend terms, assign a better tier.
• Proven anchor account: generous limit, your best pricing, longer terms.

This rewards reliable buyers, keeps your exposure to unknowns small, and turns your credit policy into a growth lever rather than a liability.

The takeaway

Net terms are how you win and keep wholesale accounts, but unstructured credit is how stores get burned. Cap exposure with per-account credit limits enforced by the system, set terms length by relationship, price each buyer correctly server-side, and invoice the moment goods ship. With those guardrails, you can say yes to terms confidently — because the structure, not your nerve, is carrying the risk.