Payment at 60-90-120 days: the Italian normality that doesn't exist in Europe

The first time I worked with an international client, something strange happened. They paid me in thirty days.

Not thirty days from the end of the month. Not thirty days from the invoice receipt date stamped and countersigned by the administration manager. Thirty days from the invoice. Period.

I checked my bank statement twice. I thought it was a mistake.

It wasn’t a mistake. It was normality — just not Italian normality.

🇮🇹 Italian normality: waiting is part of the job #

In Italy, if you’re an IT consultant working as a freelancer, the payment cycle goes roughly like this:

1. You work in October.
2. You invoice at the end of October.
3. The invoice enters the client’s administrative cycle in November.
4. The client pays at “60 days end of month” — which in practice means the end of January.
5. If things go well. If there’s no year-end payment freeze. If the administration office hasn’t “lost” the invoice. If the manager has signed the approval.

Result: you work in October, you see the money in February. Four months.

And I’m not talking about pathological situations. I’m talking about standard contractual practice in Italian IT consulting. Contracts that explicitly state “payment at 60 days from invoice date end of month” or, worse, “90 days from invoice date end of month.”

I’ve seen contracts at 120 days. One hundred and twenty days. Four months stated in the contract, which in reality become five or six. Signed without flinching, because “that’s how it works” and because the consultant who complains is the consultant who doesn’t get called back.

🇪🇺 What Europe says (and what Italy pretends not to hear) #

The European Directive 2011/7/EU on combating late payment in commercial transactions is clear. Crystal clear, I’d say:

Thirty days. Not ninety. Not one hundred and twenty. Thirty.

The directive was transposed into Italian law with Legislative Decree 231/2002 (amended in 2012). On paper, the rules exist. In practice, it’s as if they don’t.

🇩🇪 How it works in the rest of Europe #

When I tell my German, Dutch or Scandinavian colleagues that standard payment terms in Italy are 60-90 days, the reaction is always the same: first astonishment, then a nervous laugh.

In Germany the average payment term is 24 days. Not because Germans are more generous — because the system enforces it. A payment beyond 30 days automatically generates late payment interest. Companies know this and they pay.

In the Netherlands the average term is 27 days. The trade association MKB-Nederland publishes annual statistics on delays, and companies that don’t respect terms end up on public lists.

In Nordic countries — Sweden, Denmark, Finland — paying at 14 days is normal. At 30 it’s already considered long.

And Italy? The actual average payment term in Italy is 80 days according to the European Payment Report. Eighty. Almost three times the European average.

Italy isn’t just off-scale compared to northern Europe. It’s off-scale compared to its own law.

💰 The real impact on those who work #

Let’s take a concrete example. A senior IT consultant billing €250 per day, 220 working days per year.

Annual gross revenue: €55,000.

With 30-day payments, cash flow is manageable. Each month, last month’s work comes in. The consultant can plan, invest, pay taxes without going into the red.

With 90-day end-of-month payments, the picture changes radically:

For the first four months the consultant works on credit. Sixteen to twenty thousand euros of work done and unpaid. Meanwhile, taxes don’t wait. Social security contributions don’t wait. Rent doesn’t wait.

That consultant is financing their client. For free. Without interest. Without guarantees.

If you think about it, it’s a loan. Only nobody calls it that. They call it “contractual terms.”

🏦 The perverse mechanism: those who pay finance those who collect #

The paradox is structural. Large consulting firms — the ones with hundreds of employees and seven-figure revenues — negotiate long terms with suppliers (i.e., consultants) and shorter terms with end clients. The difference between collection and payment becomes a financial float that the company uses as zero-cost liquidity.

The freelance consultant is the weakest link in the chain. No negotiating power, no legal department, no immediate alternatives. They accept the 90 days because the market works that way and because refusing means staying without projects.

I’ve seen even more creative situations:

• Contracts specifying “90 days from timesheet approval date” — where approval arrives weeks late
• Invoices “blocked” for invented formal errors, to push payment to the next cycle
• Payments split without apparent reason, with the final balance arriving after six months

These aren’t exceptions. They’re consolidated tactics. Every Italian consultant with a bit of experience recognises them instantly.

⚖️ Why nobody enforces the law #

The legitimate question is: if the law provides for 30 days and late payment interest is automatic, why does nobody claim it?

The answer is simple and bitter: because the reputational cost is higher than the financial cost.

A consultant who sends a formal request for late payment interest to their client is a consultant who won’t be called again. Not because they’re wrong — they’re right, legally and morally. But because the IT consulting market in Italy is a relationship market, and in a relationship market, whoever asserts their rights is perceived as “difficult.”

It’s the same mechanism by which nobody asks for paid overtime, nobody refuses the Friday evening business trip, and nobody contests the rate that drops with every contract renewal.

The system runs on the structural docility of the consultant. And it works, as long as it works.

🛠️ What you can actually do #

I don’t have magic solutions. But I have strategies I’ve been using for years that work — or at least limit the damage.

1. Negotiate terms BEFORE signing #

It seems obvious, yet most consultants sign the contract without reading the payment clause. The moment to negotiate is before, not after. A “payment at 30 days from invoice date” written in the contract is worth more than any subsequent protest.

2. Include an explicit late payment interest clause #

Even though the law provides for it automatically, writing it in the contract has a deterrent effect. The client knows you’re not joking. I use a simple formula: “In case of late payment, late payment interest shall apply pursuant to Legislative Decree 231/2002, equal to the ECB rate plus 8 percentage points.”

3. Diversify your clients #

The consultant with a single client is the most vulnerable consultant. If 100% of your revenue depends on someone who pays at 120 days, you have no negotiating leverage. If you have three clients and one is a chronic late payer, you can afford to let them go.

4. Evaluate clients on payment punctuality too #

Before accepting an engagement, ask your colleagues. The IT consulting world is small. Who pays badly is known. Who pays well, too. I keep a mental list — and it’s not short.

5. Consider international clients #

Not out of reverse patriotism, but out of pragmatism. Northern European clients pay better, pay sooner and have more transparent administrative processes. With remote working, working for a Dutch company from Rome is no longer science fiction. It’s my Tuesday.

📊 A comparison that speaks volumes #

Take the same IT consultant — same skills, same seniority, same type of project. Only the client’s country changes.

I’m not saying that working with Italian clients is always worse. I’m saying that the numbers tell a precise story, and ignoring it for the sake of a quiet life isn’t professionalism. It’s resignation.

💬 A matter of respect #

Chronic late payment isn’t just a financial problem. It’s a problem of professional respect.

When a company pays a consultant at 120 days, it’s telling them: “Your time and your work can wait. Our schedule comes before yours.”

It’s the same message conveyed when they ask you to start “Monday” but the contract arrives three weeks later. When the timesheet must be filled in to the minute but the invoice can sit in a drawer for months. When the project is extremely urgent but the payment isn’t.

I have thirty years of consulting behind me. I’ve worked with clients who paid me in 14 days and clients who took eight months. The quality of the professional relationship has never been a matter of budget. It’s always been a matter of how they treat those who work for them.

The best clients I’ve had paid on time. Not out of generosity — out of organisation. Because a company that knows how to manage its payments is a company that knows how to manage its projects. And vice versa.

Those who pay badly almost always manage everything else badly too.

Glossary #

DSO — Days Sales Outstanding — average number of days a company takes to collect its receivables. In Italy the average is 80 days, nearly three times the European average.

Financial Float — Zero-cost liquidity generated by the difference between collection times from clients and payment times to suppliers.

Late Payment Interest — Automatic interest prescribed by law (ECB rate + 8%) accruing on every invoice paid late, without the need for formal notice.

Partita IVA — Italian tax regime for self-employed workers and freelancers, which in IT consulting implies directly bearing the credit risk toward clients.

Directive 2011/7/EU — European directive on late payments setting the standard term at 30 days, maximum at 60, and providing automatic late interest.