Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

Re:Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you? by fludlight on Thursday February 19, 2015 @07:00PM (#9078048)

It's an interest free loan from their suppliers. They also give interest free loans to their customers, so it's a two way street.

Ultimately, they want to get more free loans from their suppliers than they give to their customers

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Re:Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you? by flomo on Thursday February 19, 2015 @11:26PM (#9078907)

Just to reinforce this, I worked with a F50 which offered vendors standardized tiers of quicker payments, in return for discounts which were (much) more than whatever their expected interest income would be. The terms weren't negotiated, they were just spit out of spreadsheet based on the interest rate.

I understand the importance of "cash flow", but the real goal seemed to be shaving every nickel to maximize profitability on the deal.

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Re:Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you? by fludlight on Friday February 20, 2015 @12:21AM (#9079073)

The relative importance of cash flow vs. income is dependent on the availability of capital. A business might take that 2% discount IBM offers to pay now vs. in a month if they are out of working capital and worried about making payroll.

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Re:Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you? by sebastianconcpt on Friday February 20, 2015 @06:33AM (#9079982)

Yeah, I've heard that Carrefour does it that way

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