The 310 kr. fee that almost nobody charges

There is a provision in Renteloven (the Danish Interest Act) that entitles every business to 310 kr. every time a business customer pays late. It does not have to be agreed. It does not have to be announced. It simply has to be charged.

It is almost never charged.

It is worth understanding why, because the explanation is not ignorance. Most bookkeepers know the compensation fee perfectly well. The explanation is that 310 kr. on an invoice of 50,000 kr. looks like nothing — and that it takes five minutes to add.

::figur[sammensat]

The arithmetic turns the moment you stop looking at one invoice

Five minutes for 310 kr. is a poor deal if you look at the invoice. It is an excellent deal if you look at the year.

::figur[skala]

The point is not that 62,000 kr. saves any organisation. The point is that the money is already yours. It takes no negotiation, no salesperson and no new customer. It takes someone adding it — every time, and not only when there is time.

And that is precisely what never happens by hand. A fee that a human being has to remember 200 times a year gets charged 20 times. A fee that sits in the system gets charged 200 times. That is the whole difference, and it is not a question of diligence.

The conditions, and only those

It applies between businesses only. The compensation fee can be charged when both parties are acting in the course of business — B2B and towards the public sector. It must not be charged to a consumer. This is not a grey area, and it is the mistake that costs: a fee wrongly imposed on a consumer is not simply a fee that has to be handed back. It is an objection you have made a gift of to the debtor, and one that can be used against the entire claim.

It is per claim. Not per reminder and not per customer. If the same customer owes you seven overdue invoices, there are seven claims.

It comes on top of the reminder fees. The two provisions sit side by side in the Act and do not exclude one another. You may therefore charge both 100 kr. for the reminder and 310 kr. in compensation on the same overdue invoice.

It cannot be waived by contract. An agreement that cuts the creditor off from the compensation amount is not binding. It is one of the few places in commercial law where freedom of contract has been set aside — precisely because the stronger party would otherwise write it away.

Why the provision exists at all

The compensation fee is not a Danish invention. It is the implementation of the EU directive on combating late payment, and the directive came about because large companies were systematically using their suppliers as an interest-free overdraft.

That is worth holding on to when you are weighing up whether you “can allow yourself” to put 310 kr. on a good customer’s invoice. The provision was written to make precisely that legitimate. It regards the fee not as a penalty, but as partial cover for the costs that the late payment imposes on you — and you carry those costs no matter how good the customer is.

What is actually happening

A fee is rarely an amount. It is a message.

A customer who receives an invoice with a compensation fee has learned something about you that no email could have told them: that the account is being kept, and that the delay is being noticed. A customer who never receives one has learned something too.

The 310 kr. is not the point. The point is what it says.