Guide · 5 min read
When a store asks for credit: the days and rupees I give
I give no credit on a first order, and I say so before the carton leaves my hands. Credit starts after two reorders, at fourteen days, written on the invoice, and it stops the day one invoice goes past thirty. A café asking for credit is asking you to lend it the stock, so the answer is a number of days and a number of rupees, and both go in writing.
What credit costs, in rupees
A credit period is the days between delivery and payment. For those days the stock on the counter is your money, sitting in somebody else's store.
Take a jar at MRP ₹250 with a PTR of ₹175, the price the store pays you. A carton of 24 is ₹4,200. Thirty days of credit on that carton means you have lent a café ₹4,200 for a month, after you already paid the packer and the courier. Ten stockists on the same terms is ₹42,000 out of your account, held as ten invoices.
I think founders say yes because the ask sounds small. It is a loan of ₹4,200 to a person whose surname you learned last Tuesday.
The first order is cash
My answer to a credit ask on a first order is no, and I give it before anyone has to ask. UPI on delivery, and a GST bill (a proper tax invoice with your number on it) in the same hand as the carton.
What I offer instead is a cash discount, a small cut for paying on the day. Two per cent on ₹4,200 is ₹84, and I would rather give away ₹84 in September than chase ₹4,200 in November.
The Coca-Cola bottler's trade page puts the Indian credit period at 7 to 30 days and gives new accounts tighter terms. A founder with one SKU is the newest account a café will ever open.
When I give it, and how many days
After two reorders, both paid on the day. Two reorders means the jar moved twice without me standing there, and the owner paid twice without a reminder.
The number is fourteen days, written on the invoice as a date. "Due by 5 October" gets paid. "Fourteen days" gets read as a month.
I keep it bill-to-bill: the next carton loads once the last invoice clears. That holds the outstanding, the money billed and not yet collected, at one carton per store, the most I can afford to lose at any of them.
Thirty days is a distributor's number. SpireStock's appointment guide puts the standard DB credit period at 7 to 21 days, with cash-and-carry for a new one. A café does not need more rope than a DB gets.
Two messages and one invoice line
Both messages go on WhatsApp the same afternoon. The invoice line goes on paper.
1. The credit ask on a first order
Reply within the hour, before the deliveryThe no carries a number and the date it changes, so the owner has something to say yes to. Put your own PTR and carton size in.
2. Granting credit after two reorders
With the third invoice, not beforeThe bill-to-bill line goes in the same message as the good news, because it will never be welcome later.
3. The invoice line
Printed on every credit invoiceThree lines under the total. The Udyam line does quiet work, and the next section says what.
When the money is late
Day 15, one message with the invoice number and the amount. Day 21, no new carton, and I say that is why. Day 30, I stop supplying and say so in one line, because a store carrying two months of my money is a store I am funding.
The law sits behind the invoice line. The MSMED Act covers a micro or small enterprise with a free Udyam registration: it caps any agreed credit period at 45 days from acceptance, sets an unwritten one at 15 days, and charges a late buyer interest at three times the RBI bank rate, compounded monthly, whatever the agreement says. I have no wish to send a café a legal notice. The Act is why I never write a period past 45 days for anybody, and why the date goes on the bill.
Mira carries a buyer from the first message, through the price or sample request, to a recorded order with these terms on it, and the founder makes one decision on the phone. Her first real message left on 1 August 2026, approved and sent by hand by the founder it was for.
Where this does not work
Modern trade writes its own credit period on the chain's paper, and you sign it or stay off the shelf. A distributor's credit is his whole arithmetic, and the clause to strike is in the distributor agreement checklist. Corporate gifting runs the other way: I take an advance on a hamper order, because that budget closes on a date.
Three things founders ask
The owner says every other brand gives 30 days.
Some do, with a distributor's money behind them. Point at the ₹75 a jar of margin on MRP, the owner's cut counted against the printed price, and let the counter argue for you.
Should I take a post-dated cheque?
I would take a UPI date instead. A bounced cheque costs a bank charge and the relationship in one afternoon; a UPI reminder on the due date costs one message.
Do I charge the interest?
I do not, and the rate stays off the invoice. The Udyam number and the due date are enough for an owner who knows what they mean.