>For example - In new Zealand, the standard
>trading account terms are  "20th of the month
>following". (I have no idea why).

My father used to say it slightly differently: -

"invoices received by the 1st of the month were paid by the 20th of the
month following" i.e. it would take around 6 weeks for a company to pay an
invoice.

This used to work fine in the days when interest on overdraft was miniscule,
and everything was done by passing paper through an internal mail system for
all necessary signatures to get a cheque sent off. The last company I worked
for in NZ would do a weekly cheque run on the computer, and I suspect this
is more common these days, with computer automation allowing on-line
verification, within a company, of invoices received.

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