This was a painful learning for me when I worked for a megacorp: the bigger the customer, the less likely to pay on time.
For me as an engineering manager at the “big customer” it was a constant embarrassment. We worked with small scrappy vendors who I was on a first-name basis with. Megacorp would just never cut the checks. They would negotiate super aggressive terms to start with and then still intentionally not meet the agreed terms. I had close collaborators telling me they really needed the $$ to meet their own bills and all I could say was “I’ll send another email to purchasing and hope for the best!” Hated that so much.
I had a similar experience at a mid-sized nonprofit. We would get generous pricing from vendors with reasonable terms, then the next time around I would find we were 5 months late paying them. The internal answer was "cash flow" and "well we wouldn't want to pay them too quickly", or worse "they shouldn't be complaining, they got their check much faster than X"
Clever use of your payment terms is a valid strategy. Not respecting the agreed upon payment terms is bad business behavior, using cash flow as an excuse is just lazy. Or worse, a clear sign of financial trouble.
For me as an engineering manager at the “big customer” it was a constant embarrassment. We worked with small scrappy vendors who I was on a first-name basis with. Megacorp would just never cut the checks. They would negotiate super aggressive terms to start with and then still intentionally not meet the agreed terms. I had close collaborators telling me they really needed the $$ to meet their own bills and all I could say was “I’ll send another email to purchasing and hope for the best!” Hated that so much.