Set clear credit rules for your wholesale customers

This usually becomes important when you are supplying goods before full payment, offering 7, 14 or 30 day accounts, or dealing with repeat trade customers who order regularly. In that setting, invoices alone often do not deal properly with overdue payments, suspension of supply, recovery costs, security interests or what happens if a customer disputes part of an order. A dedicated credit terms document gives you a clearer contractual framework to rely on across ongoing supply, rather than trying to piece the relationship together from emails, order forms and invoice wording.

Credit terms for wholesale supply commonly deal with account approval, payment due dates, interest or charges on overdue amounts, when you can suspend further supply, ownership and risk issues, and whether security interest wording should be included. They may also cover order disputes, returns, customer warranties, default events and recovery costs. Drafting decisions should be based on the arrangement itself, including the documents, responsibilities and factual context, especially if your sales process involves account managers, online ordering, signed credit applications or mixed trading terms across different customer groups.

Useful details include how customers apply for credit, your usual payment periods, whether orders are placed by email, portal or purchase order, and whether you want personal promise or security support from customers. It also helps to know how you handle part-payments, disputed invoices, returns, shortages and stop-supply decisions. The practical working model can be just as important as the contract wording, so we look at what happens in practice, not just the wording you want on paper. That helps us draft terms that fit your actual account process.

A template may be a starting point, but it often misses the pressure points in a real wholesale account relationship. For example, it may not line up with your ordering process, your credit approval steps, your security position or the way you deal with overdue accounts across repeat orders. If the document does not match the way you trade, enforcement can become harder and customers may argue that different terms applied. Tailored drafting is especially useful where you have larger order values, distributor relationships, or a mix of standard supply and customer-specific arrangements.

Timing depends on how quickly you can provide your trading details and whether your supply model is straightforward or more layered. After we receive your instructions, we draft the credit terms and send them through for your review, then make the included amendment round needed to settle the final wording. Once finalised, the next step is usually rolling the terms into your account application, onboarding or ordering process. If you want help with related documents, such as a credit application form, that can be discussed separately.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Credit Terms For Wholesale Customers service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.