AR Aging and DSO for European Shops: Cash Today, Net 30 Tomorrow
A till that takes cards every hour can still starve you if two B2B accounts sit in 90+. Here is how to read aging and DSO when you mix shop sales with invoices on terms.
AR Aging and DSO for European Shops: Cash Today, Net 30 Tomorrow
US receivables pages lead with a big outstanding balance and five aging bars. The picture is useful. The product around it is often a credit line. You do not need a bank to need the picture.
If you run a shop or a restaurant that also invoices hotels, offices, distributors, or catering clients, you have two cash machines. One is the till: paid before the plate or the parcel leaves. The other is terms: Net 30, Net 60, end of month plus 15. Aging is how the second machine tells the truth.
The Buckets
Standard commercial buckets, invoice date or due date as the axis (pick one and do not mix):
| Bucket | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Current | Not yet due |
| 1 to 30 days overdue | Reminder territory. Still often "in the buyer's run." |
| 31 to 60 | Escalation. In Spain you are at or past the Law 3/2004 private cap if the original term was already long. |
| 61 to 90 | Formal demand. Statutory interest should already be on the file. |
| 90+ | Recovery, lawyer, or write-off. Concentration risk if this is one name. |
A single total of "open invoices" hides the 90+ bar. A shop with €80,000 current and €12,000 in 90+ is not the same business as a shop with €12,000 current and €80,000 in 90+.
DSO Is a Ratio, Not a Feeling
Days sales outstanding:
DSO = (accounts receivable / credit sales) × number of days in the period
Use credit sales, not till cash. Mixing POS turnover into the denominator makes DSO look healthy while the B2B book rots. Compute DSO per legal entity and, if you sell in several countries, per market.
Reference points, not targets:
- Poland. Coface Payment Survey 2026 (fieldwork January 2026, 326 firms): average payment terms 54.1 days (record since 2017), average delays 53 days (worst since 2021). Share of firms with no overdue invoices fell from 14.6% to 8.5%. Metals, agri-food, and construction are the slow tails.
- Spain. CEPYME: SME average 80.5 days at end-2025, 34% above the 60-day legal maximum. Mid-size and large firms in Q1 2026: 50.25 days to collect, 29.42 days to pay suppliers. The smaller party funds the gap.
- Germany. Civil default interest for B2B is Basiszinssatz + 9 percentage points (10.52% a year from 1 July 2026, Bundesbank base 1.52%). Terms are often 30 days. Delays still exist. There is no state payment-date feed, so your aging is the reporting.
Concentration
List open balances by customer. That list is the risk view. If one buyer is 40% of receivables and sits in 61 to 90, you do not have a collections process. You have a single point of failure. Distributors and manufacturers already know this. Shops that land one supermarket or one hotel chain discover it the first time the payment run slips.
Set a concentration warning: any buyer above a share you can survive (often 15% to 25% of AR) gets a named owner, a phone number that is not a generic AP mailbox, and a stop-ship or stop-catering rule when they cross 60 days. Write the rule down before you need it. You will not invent it politely during service.
Mixed Channels, One Customer
The same hotel pays a Saturday dinner on a card and a Monday catering invoice on Net 30. If those are two contacts in two systems, aging lies. Merge the customer. The card payment does not retire the invoice. The invoice does not mean the till sale is on terms.
Credit limits belong on that merged record. "Net 30, €5,000" is a policy. Issuing the 6,000th euro without a hold is how 90+ is born.
What the Screen Must Show
- Outstanding by bucket, in the invoice currency and in the books currency if they differ.
- The same split by customer, largest first.
- Legal status where the market has one: KSeF number and UPO date in Poland; Peppol or email transmission log in Germany; acceptance / rejection / paid-on in Spain.
- Terms actually written on the invoice, not a default in the template you forgot to change.
- DSO for credit sales only, trailing 90 days, next to last quarter.
Do not decorate this with open rates on emails. An open is not a payment. In Poland, the UPO is delivery. In Spain, acceptance is delivery of the commercial document. In Germany, the structured file plus the channel log is what you have.
Plandesk aging sits on the same customer as the POS ticket. B2B invoices on terms feed the buckets. Till sales do not. Reminders and statutory-interest fields read the overdue bucket, not a marketing campaign.
This material is information of a general nature and does not constitute legal or tax advice. For a specific situation, verify the current rules or consult a qualified adviser.