The two-line payment-terms email every creator should send procurement

Brand procurement departments are not your enemy. They are just optimizing for their company's cash flow, not yours. If you wait until the contract lands in your inbox to push back on NET 60 or NET 90 terms, you have already lost that negotiation. The time to move is before the deal is papered.

Why payment terms are decided earlier than you think

By the time a contract reaches you, the payment terms have usually been approved by a finance manager, entered into a procurement system, and treated as a template default. Asking for changes at signature forces the procurement rep to loop in finance, reopen an approval, and delay their own workflow. Most will say no just to avoid the admin.

The marketing contact who briefed you on the campaign has no idea this is happening. They sealed the deal on deliverables and creative, then handed you off to a department that has never watched one of your videos.

Your window is the two to four days between a verbal yes from marketing and the contract being drafted. That is when terms are still soft.

What "NET 90" actually costs you

A €4,800 brand deal paid at NET 90 means you are effectively lending that money to a company with a market cap that dwarfs your annual revenue. At NET 30 instead, you have that cash 60 days earlier to cover editing costs, equipment subscriptions, or simply your rent. Across four deals a year, that gap compounds into a meaningful working capital problem.

The two-line email, word for word

Send this to the procurement contact (CC the marketing contact) as soon as the verbal yes is confirmed:

Hi [Name],

Excited to work with [Brand] on this. One quick note before the contract goes out: I work on NET 30 payment terms from invoice date. Happy to send over my invoice the same day deliverables are approved so your team has everything it needs to process quickly.

Looking forward to it.

That is it. Two functional sentences and a cooperative close.

Why this framing works

• "Before the contract goes out" signals you are raising this at the right moment, not disputing a signed document.
• "I work on NET 30" states your standard as a fact, not a request. Requests invite counter-offers. Facts invite acknowledgement.
• "Happy to send my invoice the same day deliverables are approved" removes procurement's most common objection: that the invoice arrives late and delays their processing clock.
• The cooperative close keeps the marketing relationship warm. You are not being difficult. You are being organised.

When they say "our standard terms are NET 60"

Reply with one line: "Understood. Can we meet at NET 45?" You have already moved the midpoint in your favour. Many procurement contacts have discretion up to NET 45 without needing a finance sign-off. NET 60 to NET 45 on a €4,800 deal is 15 days of cash flow recovered. Take it.

If they hold firm at NET 60 or beyond, you now have a data point. Price your next deal with that brand at 10–15% above your usual rate. Late money should cost them more.

Make the invoice frictionless the moment terms are agreed

Getting NET 30 into the contract is half the job. The other half is making sure your invoice hits their inbox the moment deliverables are signed off, with every field their accounts payable system needs to process it without a back-and-forth.

One clause to ask them to add to the contract

While you have the procurement contact's attention, ask for this sentence in the payment section:

"Payment terms of NET 30 run from the date of invoice receipt, provided invoice is submitted within five business days of content approval."

The "five business days" clause protects both sides. It gives you a clear trigger (approval, not delivery), and it gives procurement a defined window so they cannot claim the invoice arrived unexpectedly. It also means the NET 30 clock starts on a date both parties have in writing, which eliminates the most common dispute about when payment was actually due.

The moment to stop negotiating and just track

Some brands will not move. Enterprise procurement at a Fortune 500 company running NET 90 across all vendors is not going to make an exception for your channel, no matter how well you phrase the email. Know when you have reached that ceiling.

At that point, your job shifts from negotiating to tracking obsessively. Invoice the day deliverables are approved. Set your reminder cadence. Know exactly which day the payment is due before you even start filming. The creators who get paid on time at NET 90 are the ones who treated the invoice like a deliverable, not an afterthought.

The two-line email does not guarantee NET 30 on every deal. It does guarantee that you asked at the right moment, in the right tone, and gave procurement every reason to say yes before the default terms were locked in. Most creators never send it. That is why most creators are chasing invoices instead of negotiating their next deal.