Deferred payments in B2B without losing liquidity

You can offer deferred payments in B2B without hurting your liquidity if two conditions hold: payment terms go only to customers you deliberately grant them to, and the cost of waiting for the money doesn't stay entirely with you. The first is handled by controlling terms per customer, the second by external financing, ideally the kind the buyer pays for. Below we explain where the cash gap comes from, what Polish law says about payment terms between businesses and how the available ways of closing that gap compare.

Where the liquidity problem comes from

A deferred payment (also called a payment term or trade credit) is a sale in which you hand over the goods today and receive payment after an agreed number of days. In B2B the customer usually expects it, because they resell the goods and want to pay with money they earn on your products.

On your side it works the other way round. With a 30-day invoice your cash is frozen for the whole month: the goods have shipped, the costs are incurred, but nothing has come in yet. With a few larger customers and longer terms, this can tie up the funds you need for day-to-day operations: restocking, wages, taxes.

Taxes are a separate problem. Under Polish VAT rules, the tax point generally arises when the goods are supplied (art. 19a(1) of the VAT Act), not when they are paid for. If your customer has 60 days and you settle VAT monthly, you will most likely pay the tax on that sale before the customer pays you.

What Polish law says about payment terms between businesses

Payment terms in commercial transactions are governed by Poland's Act of 8 March 2013 on counteracting excessive delays in commercial transactions. From a seller's point of view, three things matter:

• A 60-day limit. The payment term between businesses should not exceed 60 days from delivery of the invoice. A longer one is allowed only if the parties expressly agree to it and it is not grossly unfair to the creditor. When a large company buys from a small or medium-sized one, 60 days is a hard limit.
• Interest without a demand. Once the term expires, you are entitled to statutory interest for late payment in commercial transactions, without having to send the debtor a demand first.
• Compensation for recovery costs (art. 10 of the Act): the equivalent of EUR 40 for a debt up to PLN 5,000, EUR 70 for a debt above PLN 5,000 and below PLN 50,000, and EUR 100 from PLN 50,000 upwards.

These tools help you recover money from a customer who pays late. They don't solve the problem of a customer who pays exactly on time, but on a long term. For that you need financing, not debt collection.

Three ways to finance payment terms

Cash frozen in receivables can be released in three basic ways. They differ in who pays for the financing and how much of your sales they cover.

A loan and factoring both work, but they eat into your margin and tend to be rigid: they cover everything, including transactions that don't need financing at all. With factoring you also need to check who carries the risk of the customer's insolvency, because in recourse factoring it stays with you.

How buyer-side deferral works

Buyer-side financing shifts the burden: it's the buyer who decides whether to defer payment or split it into instalments, and it's the buyer who bears the cost of that decision. You receive the full amount right away, as if the customer had paid up front.

In practice it looks like this:

1. The customer places an order and, at checkout, chooses deferral or instalments.
2. The financing provider (e.g. PragmaPay) assesses the transaction and pays you the full amount.
3. The customer settles up with the financier by the agreed date, on terms they accepted.

You still sell "on terms," just as before, but the liquidity stays with you, not with the customer. That changes the economics of every larger transaction.

When buyer-side financing pays off

• You have customers who expect payment terms and won't buy "up front."
• Individual orders are large enough that freezing the cash hurts.
• You don't want to factor all of your sales, only selected transactions.
• You want the buyer to bear the cost of financing, not the seller.

It makes less sense for small, frequent orders from customers you know well and who pay on time. There, a short term set directly on the customer is enough.

What to watch out for with deferred payments

• Cost transparency for the customer. The buyer must clearly see how much the deferral costs before choosing it. A hidden cost comes back later as a complaint or a lost customer.
• The financier's limit and decision. Not every transaction and not every customer will be granted financing. That's normal, but have a second path ready for such a customer: prepayment or your own, shorter term.
• Consistency with the invoice. The payment, invoice and order should describe the same transaction so the accounting adds up. Now that KSeF is mandatory, the invoice lives in the state system, so mismatched amounts are harder to straighten out afterwards; we cover this in our piece on KSeF 2026 in B2B sales.
• One term for everyone. The same term for a brand-new customer and for a buyer who has paid on time for years means either unnecessary risk or an unnecessarily put-off regular customer.

Payment terms in vendispace: per company, group and customer

In a vendispace store, the customer picks one of the payment methods you've made available to them at checkout: prepayment by bank transfer, online payment through a gateway (Przelewy24, PayU, Tpay or PayNow), or payment on terms. You decide which methods they see at three levels: company, customer group and individual customer. A new buyer can pay only up front, while a proven one gets a term.

The term itself works on the same three levels. You set the default number of days for the whole company (14 days if you set nothing), a customer group can override it, and a customer overrides the group. The system accepts anything from 1 to 365 days, but the Act on counteracting excessive delays in commercial transactions generally limits terms between businesses to 60 days.

When an order is placed, the system saves the term and the due date on it. The customer sees that date on their order, you see it in the admin panel. Changing the term on the customer later doesn't move the dates on orders already placed. An order on terms goes straight into fulfilment instead of waiting for payment like a prepaid one, and it can be marked as paid even after shipping, because with a payment term the transfer normally arrives after the goods have left.

The invoice for such an order is issued through your connected inFakt or Fakturownia account, so the order, invoice, payment and shipment all describe the same transaction. We explain how these pieces form one flow in our article on B2B integrations: invoices, payments and shipping.

Summary

• A payment term is credit you give the customer out of your own money, and you usually pay the VAT on that sale before they pay you.
• Poland's Act on counteracting excessive delays generally caps terms between businesses at 60 days and gives you interest and compensation when a customer pays late.
• A working-capital loan and factoring finance terms at your expense. Buyer-side financing shifts that cost to the customer who chooses to defer.
• The cheapest tool is differentiation: terms and payment methods set separately for groups and individual customers.

Frequently asked questions

What payment term should I give a new B2B customer?

The safest option is none, or a short one, until the customer has placed a few orders and paid for them on time. To start with, prepayment or online payment is enough, and you switch on a term once the customer has a track record. In vendispace that's a change to the payment methods on the customer's record, without touching anyone else's settings.

What can I do when a customer doesn't pay on time?

Under the Act of 8 March 2013 you charge statutory interest for late payment in commercial transactions and can claim compensation of EUR 40, 70 or 100, depending on the size of the debt. Just as important in practice: have that customer place further orders on prepayment until they settle the arrears.

Do I have to pay VAT before the customer pays my invoice?

Usually yes, because the tax point arises on supply, not on payment. If the customer never pays, the Polish VAT Act provides bad-debt relief (art. 89a), available 90 days after the payment due date. That, however, recovers the tax after the fact; it doesn't protect your liquidity.

How is factoring different from buyer-side financing?

In factoring, you sign the agreement with the factor and pay a fee on the invoices you assign. In buyer-side financing, the customer signs with the financier, chooses deferral or instalments themselves and bears their cost. In both cases you get the money sooner, but in the second one not at the expense of your own margin.

Can I offer payment terms to only some customers?

Yes. In vendispace, payment methods and the number of days are set at company, customer-group and individual-customer level, with the lower level overriding the higher one. In the store, a customer sees only the payment methods and the term that apply to them.

Does changing a customer's term change the terms on their past orders?

No. The term and due date are saved on the order when it is placed, so a new setting applies only to future orders. That way the due date on the order matches what the customer accepted at checkout.

Payment terms work best alongside individual commercial terms, so also read how to set up an individual price list for a B2B customer and why an invitation-only B2B store makes it easier to run different terms for different buyers. You can check what each plan includes on the pricing page. Want to stop financing your customers out of your own pocket? Create a free account and set payment terms on your own conditions.