How do coffee roasters get paid on time by wholesale accounts?

Count terms from the delivery date, set them per delivery location, and make it easy for accounts to send you money the way their bookkeeper already pays. That bookkeeper is the one paying you, not the café manager who placed the order. Cafés and offices pay by check, by a bank transfer they start themselves, or by card, and many won’t let you pull money from their bank account. Build your invoicing around that, and keep a short, polite routine for anything past due.

The rules, in order

1. Terms start on the delivery date. Net 30 means 30 days from when the coffee arrived. If the invoice is dated Monday and the coffee lands Thursday, the account gets three fewer days than you agreed. If the invoice is raised a week late, you’ve lent the account a week of free credit. Date the invoice on the delivery day.
2. Terms belong to the location that receives the coffee. A café group with three shops may pay from one office, but each shop can be on different terms and order on different days. Keep the terms on each delivery location, with one default for everyone else.
3. One invoice per order. When an order changes after it shipped, change that same invoice. A second invoice for “the two extra bags” is the one that gets missed or paid twice.
4. Put the invoice number in the email subject. Accounts payable teams search their inbox by invoice number. “Invoice 4417 from [Roastery], due Oct 2” gets found. “Your invoice” doesn’t.
5. Send a monthly statement to every account on terms. A statement lists every open invoice in one place. It catches the invoice that went to a manager who left, and it’s often what a bookkeeper actually pays from.

For how terms themselves work (Net 15, Net 30, due on receipt), see invoicing and payment terms. Setting this up in QuickBooks: How should a coffee roaster set up QuickBooks Online for wholesale invoicing?

How wholesale accounts actually pay

Your accounts are businesses, and businesses guard their bank accounts. Their account numbers are printed on every check they write, so debit fraud is common, and many tell their bank to block debits from anyone they haven’t approved. Under the ACH network’s rules, a business’s bank has only two banking days to send back a debit the business didn’t authorize (a consumer has 60 days), so many keep debit authority tightly controlled.

The ways they pay:

• Check. Still common with established cafés, restaurants and offices. Slow, but familiar to their bookkeeper.
• A bank transfer they send. The account pays from its own online banking to your bank details printed on the invoice. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to authorize.
• Card. The easiest for the account and the most expensive for you. Some roasters keep a card on file and charge it on the due date: it gets them paid on time, at the highest fee.
• Debit you pull (ACH debit or autopay). Some accounts agree. Others need to approve you at their bank first, and some simply say no. Don’t build your whole collection plan on it.

The practical upshot: print your bank transfer details on every invoice, accept cards for the accounts that want them, and treat autopay as a bonus for the few who agree to it.

What each way of paying costs you

Typical US costs, from Visa’s interchange schedule (April 2026 edition) and processors’ published rates.

Two things roasters often miss:

• Wholesale cards are the expensive end. Your accounts mostly pay with business cards, which carry higher network fees than consumer cards. Sending full line-item detail with the payment (Level 3 data) still lowers the rate a lot on corporate and purchasing cards. On the small-business cards most cafés carry, Visa now cuts only about a quarter of a point, under $1 on a $350 invoice, before a small Visa data fee. Since April 18, 2026, sending just tax and an invoice number (Level 2) no longer earns a lower Visa rate. Ask your processor what applies to your mix.
• A flat-rate processor hides this. On a flat rate (for example 2.9% plus 30 cents, about $10.45 on a $350 invoice), the processor absorbs the difference. On “interchange plus” pricing you pay the real card cost, so a business-card-heavy mix costs more than the quote suggested.

Surcharge or discount?

If card fees are hurting, there are two ways to steer accounts toward bank payments. This isn’t legal advice: check your state’s rules, and ask a lawyer before you add a card fee.

• A card surcharge (adding a fee for paying by card). Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine ban card surcharges, and Connecticut’s ban covers sales between businesses and extra fees for any payment method. Several other states cap them or set notice rules. Where they’re allowed, card network rules apply: notice to your processor at least 30 days ahead, the fee shown before payment and on the receipt, a cap at your actual card cost (Visa: no more than 3%), and credit cards only, never debit or prepaid. A proposed Visa and Mastercard settlement would loosen some of these rules; a court gave it preliminary approval in June 2026, and nothing changes until final approval. Card networks allow a convenience fee only as a flat fee for an unusual payment channel, so a percentage fee for paying by card is a surcharge, whatever it’s called.
• A discount for paying by bank. Post your card price as the price, and take a little off for check or bank transfer. Federal law stops card networks from banning these discounts, and the states that ban surcharges allow them with a clear notice before payment (Connecticut requires a posted notice). Show the card price as the normal price on the invoice and price list, and state the bank discount before payment.

If you’re unsure, the discount is the safer choice.

When an invoice goes past due

Most late invoices aren’t refusals. They’re lost, stuck with someone who left, or waiting on a question nobody asked you. Assume that first.

1. Day 1 past due: a short, friendly email to the billing contact, invoice number in the subject, invoice attached. “Just checking this reached the right person.”
2. Day 7: the statement, with every open invoice. Copy the person who orders, not only the bookkeeper. They usually know who pays.
3. Day 14: a phone call. Ask whether anything about the order or the invoice is holding it up. Fix what you hear (a wrong quantity, a missing PO number) and resend.
4. Day 30 past due: a clear, calm note that new orders go on hold until the balance is cleared. Then actually hold them. Say it before the order, not on the delivery day.
5. After that: a payment plan for an account worth keeping, or a decision about whether it is.

Write the sequence down once and use it for every account. Consistency is what makes it feel fair, to the account and to you.

Where effizient fits

Once you switch it on, effizient writes each wholesale order into QuickBooks Online as an invoice, by default when the order is fulfilled. The invoice is dated to the delivery day, so terms count from delivery, and it’s due on that location’s own terms or your business default. Each delivery location is linked to a QuickBooks customer, never just the company as a whole. When an order changes, the same invoice is updated instead of a second one being created.

Sources

• Visa: U.S. interchange reimbursement fees (edition effective April 18, 2026)
• Square: US processing fees; Stripe: US pricing
• Nacha: Differentiating unauthorized return reasons
• Connecticut General Statutes §42-133ff; 15 U.S.C. 1693o-2
• Visa: Merchant surcharging considerations and requirements