Corporate Client, 90-Day Terms: Settle This Before You Sign

The purchase order arrives on a Thursday, from the biggest client your studio has landed, and on page two it says: "Payment: 90 days from receipt of correct invoice." You were planning to hire on the strength of this project.

If you run a small studio or agency, or you are a senior freelancer taking on a larger company, this is the moment to slow down. Corporate client payment terms are mostly fixed after you sign and mostly open before. Below is the checklist for before, with a few lines to copy.

What 90 days really costs a small studio

Say the project is ₹6,00,000 and takes two months, and that you invoice at the end under a PO that says 90 days from receipt of a correct invoice.

Now add friction. Three weeks after you submit, the invoice comes back because the PO number is missing, so you re-raise it and their clock starts again, which puts you close to six months from the day you started work, with salaries going out every month in between.

Four things tend to go wrong on these deals: 90 or 120 day terms, invoices sent back to be re-raised, a TDS rate chosen by the client's accounts department, and documents demanded at the last minute.

You can ask about almost all of it before you sign.

The checklist: settle these before you sign

Seven things. Get each answer in writing.

1. Payment term, in days, and from which date. "90 days" means little until you know the start: invoice date is clear, but "receipt of correct invoice" means their accounts desk decides when the clock begins.
2. Advance or first milestone. Ask if any part is payable on signing or on a first deliverable.
3. PO number, and what you must print on the invoice. The PO number, their GSTIN, and the billing entity's exact name and address. The entity that pays you is often not the brand name you know.
4. Who approves and who releases. One person signs off the work and another releases the money, so get both names and an email address for each.
5. TDS rate and certificate. Ask which rate they will apply and when the TDS certificate reaches you. As of October 2026, TDS is commonly 10% on professional fees and 2% on technical services. The client decides the rate, and you should get credit for what they deduct. Rules change, so confirm with a CA.
6. Vendor onboarding documents. Typically PAN, GST certificate if you have one, Udyam certificate, a cancelled cheque and the signed agreement. Ask for the full list now and prepare it once.
7. Where to send invoices. A portal, or a specific email address? An invoice sent to your contact's inbox may not count as received.

All seven fit in one email.

Subject: A few payment details before we sign

Hi Pooja, we're keen to get started. Before we sign, could you or your accounts contact confirm these, so our invoices go through the first time?

1. The payment term in days, and the date it counts from.
2. Whether an advance or a first milestone payment is possible.
3. The PO number, and the exact billing entity name, address and GSTIN to print on our invoice.
4. Who approves our work, and who releases payment.
5. The TDS rate you will apply to our invoices, and when you will issue the TDS certificate.
6. The full list of vendor onboarding documents, so we can send them in one go.
7. Where we should send invoices.

The TDS side gets its own post, five TDS questions to ask a client before invoicing. If the deduction has already happened, I cover what to do in TDS deducted from a freelance invoice.

Wording to ask for shorter terms or a milestone split

Ask your business contact, not procurement.

Asking for fewer days

We're a small studio, and 90 days is hard for us to carry on a project of this size. Could we agree 30 days from invoice date? If your policy has less room than that, 45 days from invoice date would work for us.

Asking for a milestone split instead

If the 90-day term can't change, could we split the invoicing? 30% on signing, 40% on design approval and 30% on delivery. Each invoice follows your standard term, and neither side carries the full amount at once.

Asking about the clock

Could the PO say "from invoice date" in place of "from receipt of correct invoice"? If that wording has to stay, please add that you will request any correction within 7 days of receipt.

The milestone split is the easier ask, because it leaves their policy alone. On a ₹6,00,000 project, your first ₹1,80,000 is in their queue from week one. I've written a longer walkthrough on invoicing a project in milestones, and on choosing the number of days in freelance invoice payment terms.

What Udyam registration changes

Careful here, because this part is law and I am not a lawyer: everything below is as of October 2026, rules change, and you should confirm any of it with a CA or lawyer before you rely on it.

• Under the MSMED Act, a buyer must pay a registered micro or small supplier by the date agreed in writing, and that agreed period cannot be longer than 45 days from the day the work is accepted. If nothing is agreed in writing, the buyer must pay within 15 days of acceptance. Work counts as accepted unless the buyer objects in writing within 15 days of delivery.
• If a buyer pays a micro or small supplier later than that limit, the buyer cannot claim a tax deduction for the amount until it actually pays. This is section 37(2)(g) of the Income-tax Act, 2025, which replaced section 43B(h) of the old Act on 1 April 2026.
• This protection depends on the supplier having Udyam registration before the work was supplied. Registering later does not cover earlier work.
• There is an online portal for delayed payments, the MSME ODR portal, which now takes new cases in place of the older Samadhaan portal.

What that means in practice for a small studio:

• If you hold a Udyam registration, hand over the certificate at onboarding, not during a dispute.
• Print the Udyam number on your quotes and invoices.
• If you are not registered, ask your CA whether you qualify, and do it before the work starts.
• The Act caps any period agreed in writing at 45 days from acceptance of the work, so a 90-day PO term does not stretch that limit for a registered micro or small supplier. Whether to lean on it with a client you want to keep is a separate question for your CA or lawyer.

It is hard to take a formal route against a client you want to keep working for, and that instinct is fair. Treat it as a last step, not a reminder.

How to stop a re-raised invoice restarting the clock

Small errors cause most re-raises, so close them off before the first invoice.

Send a draft first.

Hi Latha, attaching a draft of our first invoice against PO 4500012345. Could you confirm the entity name, address, GSTIN and PO reference are exactly as you need, before we issue it?

Submit it their way, and keep proof. Use the portal or the address they named, and save the dated confirmation.

Ask for an acknowledgement.

Please confirm receipt of INV26-061 dated 5 October, and that it is complete for processing.

If they ask for a correction, hold the date.

Happy to correct it. Please send every change you need in one list. And please confirm by reply that the payment term continues to count from the original submission date of 5 October, since neither the work nor the amount has changed.

Before you cancel and reissue any invoice, ask your CA how to correct it properly. It can affect your GST records.

Where Riffit fits, and where it doesn't

I built Riffit, and for a corporate client its role is small.

What it does:

• GST number. Switch on GST in your profile and add your GST number, and Riffit adds GST at 18% to the invoice, one rate per invoice.
• TDS on the invoice. You declare the deduction by picking the kind of work. The invoice shows the deduction and the net amount the client should transfer, worked out on your fee before GST. Say your fee is ₹2,00,000 and you add GST at 18%, which is ₹36,000. With TDS declared at 10%, the invoice shows ₹20,000 deducted and ₹2,16,000 as the net to transfer. When the money arrives you record what was actually withheld, and the invoice closes as settled in full. I walk through it step by step in show TDS on your invoice.
• Milestone billing. Once the client accepts a quotation, you can turn it into invoices on the dashboard and bill it in parts, so the 30/40/30 split above becomes three invoices from one agreed quote. On Free, each part counts toward your 5 invoices a month.

What it doesn't do:

• Riffit does not split GST into CGST and SGST (or IGST), and it does not add HSN or SAC codes. If you are GST registered, the GST rules list the tax split and a service code (SAC) among the details of a tax invoice to a business, and a corporate accounts department may need them to claim its input tax credit. So check with your CA before you treat a Riffit invoice as your GST tax invoice, and use a tool that prints them.
• It has no PO number field. Put the PO number in the line item details or in the terms.
• On TDS, you pick the rate and it stores the figures you enter. It will not tell you whether this client has to deduct, what you owe, or whether you have crossed a threshold.
• It is single-user, and it does not detect payments. You mark invoices paid yourself.

When a correct invoice crosses the agreed date

The invoice was right, the term has passed, and nothing has arrived. Work through it in order.

1. Day 1 after the due date. Write to the person who releases payment. Quote the PO number, invoice number and submission date. Ask for the payment date.
2. Day 7. Write again, with your business contact in copy. Ask what it is waiting on.
3. Day 15. Write to your business contact in a separate thread from the project. Ask them to get you a date. Keep it to two lines.
4. Day 30. If your terms say new work pauses at 30 days overdue, pause it and say so. Send a formal letter with the full history.
5. After that. If you have Udyam registration, speak to a CA or lawyer about the MSME route, including the MSME ODR portal.

Throughout, ask for a date and not for payment. You can check a date.

Keep one folder per client with the PO, each invoice, proof of submission and the approval of the work. For the weekly habit that stops any of this slipping, I wrote up a payment follow-up routine for a small studio.

If that PO is still unsigned, send the seven-question email today.

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