Units, shipping and payment
How payment terms work
How the terms on a purchase order are reconciled with your Shopify payment-terms templates and the buyer's location settings.
Updated
Three things have an opinion about payment terms: the purchase order, the company location in Shopify, and your Shopify payment-terms templates. The draft order needs one answer.
Where terms come from
Your Shopify payment-terms templates are the only things that can be put on a draft order. “Net 30”, “Due on receipt”, “Net 60” — whatever you have set up in Shopify. PO Autopilot cannot invent a term that is not one of these.
The company location may have default terms configured in Shopify. That is what the buyer has been agreed to normally get.
The purchase order may state terms of its own, which may or may not match.
How the match is made
If the document states terms that correspond to one of your templates, that template is used. If it states nothing, the location’s default applies. If you have previously resolved this buyer’s wording for this location, that decision is reused.
Anything else becomes a decision: Review payment terms, choosing from your current Shopify templates.
What the draft carries
The template you settled on is sent to Shopify with the draft order.
Different kinds of term need different information, and this is handled for you:
- A net term — Net 30, Net 60 — counts days from the issue date, so the issue date is sent and Shopify works out the due date.
- A fixed term needs a specific due date, which you enter.
- Terms relative to receipt or fulfilment need neither, because Shopify already knows when those happen.
Terms can change while you review
Payment-terms configuration is read live from Shopify. If the location’s terms or your templates change between your choosing and the draft being created, the order returns to review with the decision reopened rather than being created on terms you did not agree to.
When the buyer’s terms differ from yours
The purchase order asking for Net 60 does not make it so. You choose which template goes on the draft, and it is a commercial decision, not a document-reading one.
If a buyer routinely asks for terms you do not give them, the durable fix is in Shopify: set the company location’s default terms to what you have actually agreed, so every order starts from the right answer.