The best invoice terms to get you paid faster.

Recently, we looked at our data to see if we could extract some insights that might really help FreshBooks customers get paid faster. Our question: how does the wording of the “terms” section of an invoice impact the number of days it takes you to get paid and the percent of invoices you actually collect on.

In the graph above we’ve mapped two key things gleaned from the data of our paying FreshBooks users. In the bar graph, we’ve looked at how long it takes to get paid based on various wordings used in the Terms field on an invoice (e.g. “Please pay within 21 days” or “Payment terms: net 30. Interest accrued at 1.5% per month thereafter”). On this chart of days to pay vs. terms used, the shorter the bar, the better.

The second thing we’ve charted is the percentage of invoices actually paid vs. terms used (the data points in the top section of the graph). On this scale, higher is better. Another way of thinking about this is: the wider the gap between the bar and the data point above it, the better the wording (in general, although there are a handful of exceptions).

Interesting for the kit makers/sellers out there to consider!