A food distributor in Canada usually gets paid about 30 days after delivery, and often later. Nearly two-thirds of business-to-business (B2B) invoices in Canada are due within one month of invoicing, yet late payment affects seven in ten Canadian businesses and ties up roughly one quarter of all B2B receivables.[1]
Most of that delay is not credit risk. It is the distance between the moment an invoice exists and the moment a payment is actually triggered.
The short answer. Payment lands about 30 days after delivery. Close the gap between invoice generation and payment execution and the term can go to zero, which means the invoice is paid as the delivery completes.
In Canada the standard is 30 days or less from invoicing, and the real number runs longer. Atradius found that Canadian businesses offer shorter payment terms than their North American peers, with nearly two-thirds of B2B invoices due within one month. Late payment still reaches seven in ten of them.[1]
The money does arrive. More than seven in ten Canadian businesses write off less than 1% of B2B invoices, so overdue accounts are collected rather than lost.[1]
So this is not a credit problem. It is a timing problem, and timing is decided by how your invoices and payments are wired together.
Whether the order arrives on the WEGOTRADE marketplace or through your own white-label platform, the invoice reaches your customer one of two ways.
The second path is what makes payment on delivery possible. The invoice exists while the driver is still at the door, not the next morning when someone runs a batch.
Once the invoice is in front of them, WEGOPay supports two modes, and the difference between them is the whole article.
Pre-authorized payment is the mode that changes the arithmetic, because it executes against the payment term attached to each individual invoice.
It is also the most rep-free way to get paid, which is what your customers say they want. Gartner surveyed 646 B2B buyers between August and September 2025 and found 67% prefer a rep-free experience.[2]
On pre-authorized payment, every invoice is paid automatically according to its own term. Set the term to 30 days and the transaction fires on day 30. Set it to zero and the invoice is paid the moment it is generated.
Put a zero-day term together with an invoice generated at delivery and the payment is taken as the delivery completes. That is payment on delivery, with no cash, no cheque and no driver collecting anything.
The mechanic in one line. Pre-authorized payment plus a zero-day term plus an invoice generated at delivery equals cash on delivery, executed in the banking network instead of at the door.
The term is set per invoice, so this is not one policy imposed across your whole customer book. You can run 30 days on the accounts that need it and zero on the accounts that do not.
None of this holds together unless invoices and payments move both ways between your ERP and the platform.
An invoice created in your ERP has to reach the customer. A payment taken on the platform has to land back in the ERP, against the right invoice, without anyone keying it. Real ERP integration means both directions, not a nightly export.
When the sync only runs one way you get the failure every collections team recognises. A customer who paid on Tuesday gets a reminder on Thursday. A rep quotes a balance that was settled two days ago. Your customer disputes it, and now a paid invoice costs you a phone call.
Bidirectional sync is what makes the status your customer sees and the status your team sees the same number. That is where the accounts receivable hours actually disappear.
A documented WEGOTRADE ROI study puts numbers on it. The mid-size scenario: food distribution with direct store delivery (DSD), 2,975 orders a month, about 140 every working day, 14 drivers and 3 customer service agents, $26,775,000 in revenue, running Business Central.
Food B2B is perishables, so the volume is the point. The same customers reorder every few days, all year, and every one of those orders becomes an invoice somebody has to chase.
The study measured 12,555 hours a year of manual effort across the full order-to-cash cycle. Two stages sit entirely downstream of the delivery:
| Stage | Hours recovered per year | Value recovered |
|---|---|---|
| Payments | 1,517.2 | $53,284 |
| Accounts receivable | 1,904.0 | $66,868 |
| Both stages | 3,421.2 | $120,153 |
The payment and collection stages alone account for about 3,421 hours a year, more than a third of all the manual effort measured in the business.
Across the whole cycle the study recovers 9,181.2 hours, about 5.5 full-time equivalents, and $228,299 net at steady state, a 243% return with payback at 4.8 months. Full detail sits on the mid-size distributor scenario page.
One honest note on that figure. For this scenario the net saving and the return are steady-state numbers, reached after roughly 3 months of setup and 4 months of progressive rollout. The payback figure is the one that reflects the real year-one path.
The model assumes 85% of payments automated, made up of 60% paid online and 25% collected at the door by the driver. That second number is the zero-day term doing its job.
Automation removes the operational reason for a long term. It does not remove the commercial one.
Some of your customers run on thin working capital, and a 30-day term is the reason they order from you every week. Move them to zero and you will not collect faster, you will lose the account. Atradius already flags that more than one in four Canadian businesses expect customer insolvency risk to rise in the coming months.[1]
Because the term is set per invoice, you never have to make that call once for everyone.
Start with the accounts that already pay early. A customer who consistently settles in four days on a 30-day term is not using the credit, they are using the habit.
Move those accounts to pre-authorized payment on a short term, confirm the payments are landing back in your ERP against the right invoices, then shorten the term. Watch what your days-to-payment number does over one quarter.
Online payment costs your customers nothing, and on your side a bank transfer carries a flat fee per transaction rather than a percentage of the invoice. We ran that math separately in B2B Payment Fees Are Eating Your Margin.
Q: How long does it take a food distributor to get paid after delivery?
A: In Canada, usually about 30 days. Nearly two-thirds of B2B invoices are due within one month of invoicing, and late payment affects seven in ten Canadian businesses, accounting for about one quarter of B2B receivables.[1]
Q: What is a zero-day payment term?
A: A payment term of zero days means the invoice is due the moment it is generated. Combined with pre-authorized payment, the transaction is launched automatically at generation rather than waiting for a due date.
Q: Is this the same as cash on delivery?
A: It achieves the same result without cash. The invoice is generated at the delivery, the payment term is zero, and the pre-authorized transaction runs in the banking network as a bank transfer or a credit card charge. Nothing is collected at the door.
Q: How does pre-authorized payment work on WEGOPay?
A: Your customer is set up once on pre-authorized payment. After that WEGOPay launches each payment itself, on the term attached to each invoice, by bank transfer or credit card. Your customer takes no action per invoice and you send no reminder.
Q: Why does the ERP sync have to run in both directions?
A: Because invoices travel one way and payments travel the other. If payments do not post back to the ERP automatically, your team chases invoices that are already settled and your customer sees a balance that is not real. Bidirectional sync of invoices and payments is what keeps both sides looking at the same status.
Q: How much administrative time does this recover?
A: In the documented mid-size scenario, 2,975 orders a month, the payments and accounts receivable stages together account for 3,421.2 hours a year, worth $120,153. Across the full order-to-cash cycle the same study recovers 9,181.2 hours and $228,299 net at steady state.
Q: Does online payment cost my customers anything?
A: No. Paying online is free for your B2B customers. On the distributor side, bank transfers carry a fixed fee per transaction with no percentage of the invoice.
WEGOTRADE ROI figures are from the documented five-scenario ROI study, scenario 3 of 5 (mid-size distributor).
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