Payment terms say when you expect to receive payment from a customer or when your vendors expect payment from you. For example, if you expect payment from a customer within 30 days, and you give a discount of 2% if payment is received in 10 days, the terms are 2% 10 Net 30.
QuickBooks supplies a list of often-used payment terms. Because QuickBooks uses terms for both invoices to your customers and bills from your vendors, you only need to add a particular set of terms once to the list.
You can edit a customer or vendor and select the payment terms for each. Then QuickBooks automatically enters terms for you in invoices and bills.