Barry Appleby Sep 14, 2012:

net on an invoice means that the recipient pays the amount specified; no more; no less. Under Swedish law, penalty interest can be charged if the invoice is no paid after a couple of reminders and a certain time has elapsed.
This may explain the use of the term 'netto'.

Oliver Dirs (asker) Sep 11, 2012:

Thanks very much for the explanation Leif!

Leif Henriksen Sep 11, 2012:

Old expression You didn't get much out of the (so far) only answer, so let me try to expalin a bit of the background here.

In earlier days, many businesses used terms as '30 days net or -2% cash'. The cash then would mean paying immediately on receipt of the invoice. It is kind of a paradox that 'net' here means before deducting a possible cash rebate.

For all practical purposes, you can consider the term in your text as 'in full', although 'net' is literallly correct.

By the way, people do not consider 2% to be much. But then they do not consider the miracle of compund interest: If you consider 10 'grace days' on the cash option, these tiny two percent would actually amount to a yearly interest rate (p.a.) of around 43%!