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Mis à jour le 15 October 2026

Customer credit

Customer credit
Contents

Le crédit client

To learn more, read our guide on credit management and check out our debt collection software.

What is customer credit?

Visit customer credit is a commercial agreement between two companies. It concerns the payment periodgranted to a business customer to settle its debt.

At accountingthe customer credit is a debt incurred by a company:

  • Either to its suppliers, in the case of a delivery of goods.
  • Or to a company, as part of aservice provision.

Visit customer credit allows a company to defer payment for the delivery of a delivery of goods or a service.

By taking out a customer creditIn the case of a debt, the company can purchase goods or services without having to pay immediately. However, it undertakes to repay the debt at a later date.

In accounting terms, this is the liabilities which is directly impacted. Visit customer credit is included in liabilities. These correspond to the total amount of outstanding amounts by the company.

When the company repays its debt, the amount of the customer credit is debited from current liabilities. current liabilities and credited tocurrent assets.

In the opposite casecurrent assets would be used to extend payment terms to customers.

How do you calculate customer credit?

Customer credit contracted by a company :

To calculate customer creditis the sum of all outstanding debts owed by the company to its customers.

Voici un exemple :

  • Company “A” enters into a commercial agreement with company “B” for the supply of goods worth €50,000 including VAT. The commercial agreement stipulates a payment term of 60 days.
  • Company “A” purchases the services of company “C”, for the sum of €7,000 including VAT. Once again, the commercial agreement stipulates a payment term of 60 days.

In this case, the customer credit of company “A” is equal to €57,000 inc. VAT, i.e. the total amount owed to companies “Bée” and “C”.

Customer credit granted by a company :

Il est également possible de calculer la durée moyenne d’un crédit client accordé par les entreprises.

To do this, you need to know theoutstanding customer balance on sales sales.

To obtain this ratio, it is necessary to divide the accounts receivable by sales and multiply by the number of days in the year.

Voici un exemple :

  • Company “A” generated sales of 300,000 euros (incl. VAT) in 2022. Its trade receivables for the same year amount to 70,000 euros.

In this case, the customer credit ratio granted by the company in 2022 will be 84.

How do you manage customer credit?

Every customer credit represents a customer risk: late payment, customer receivablesetc….

Visit late payments can have a real negative impact on your cash flow. On average, for a B2B relationshipIt takes around 50 days for a company to receive payment. And this can rise to 60 days in the case of a commercial relationship with a public company.

It is therefore necessary to control this risk.

The collection software can be an excellent way of automating the work of reminding customers and customizing their customer relations. Aston AI endosse les principales fonctions du credit management.

Il vous permet notamment :

  • Create configurable scenarios and templates with multi-channel reminders (mail, letters, materialized mail, telephone, SMS) and reception status,
  • A customer view, from summary to invoice, in just 3 clicks,
  • D’établir automatiquement un scoring ainsi qu’un prévisionnel d’encaissement,
  • D’obtenir une vision personnalisée par utilisateur correspondant à votre organigramme : opérateur de relance, commercial, business unit, directeur financier, …

See also: Cash Flow and Working Capital Optimization with Redbridge.

Learn more
Aston AI: From Order to Cash

Founded in 2011, ASTON AI, voted Fintech of the Year 2015, has revolutionized the receivables management market in ten years by offering a high-performance, simple, comprehensive and innovative platform. ASTON AI’s platforms benefit from 10 years of continuous technological development and an in-house R&D department dedicated to digital services.

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