If you bill a customer in Mexico and the invoice is flagged PPD (paid in installments or deferred), a second electronic document is due once the money lands: the CFDI de pago. Collections and tax paperwork share the same clock here, so the flow that chases the payment has to issue that document too.
In short
- How the invoice is flagged decides it: PUE (paid in full at billing), nothing extra; PPD, a CFDI de pago is due.
- The deadline is the fifth calendar day of the month after the payment came in.
- One CFDI de pago can cover all the payments a single customer made in a period of one month.
- Getting the money in faster does not close the paperwork: the cash can sit in your account while the CFDI de pago is still pending.
Three terms to get straight first
- SAT: the Servicio de Administración Tributaria, Mexico's federal tax authority, which publishes the invoicing rules and deadlines below.
- CFDI: the electronic invoice used in Mexico; 4.0 is the version the current payment complement works with.
- PAC: short for proveedor autorizado de certificación, a company the SAT authorizes to certify (stamp) invoices.
When a CFDI de pago is required
The trigger is the flag on the invoice. If you bill a customer in Mexico and they pay right then, the invoice is flagged PUE (pago en una sola exhibición) and nothing else is issued. If the invoice is flagged PPD (pago en parcialidades o diferido), each payment received needs its own document: the complemento para recepción de pagos, or CFDI de pago.
The SATpublishes the current version: 2.0 of the payment complement, compatible with CFDI 4.0 and mandatory since April 1, 2023. The deadline sits in regla 2.7.1.32 of the Resolución Miscelánea Fiscal for 2026, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación and on the SAT portal. The same rule lets one document cover all the payments a single customer made in a period of one month.
| How the invoice is flagged | CFDI de pago? | Deadline to issue it |
|---|---|---|
| PUE: the customer pays the moment you issue it | No | Not applicable |
| PPD: the money comes later, in full or in installments | Yes, one per payment or one a month per customer | Fifth calendar day of the month after the payment |
Automating the reminder and the payment link does not cover this step: if your system does not issue the CFDI de pago, that document is still owed after the money is in the account. If you are evaluating one, check that it issues CFDI 4.0 through your PAC and handles the month-end close, a piece Walabi already has built. The full breakdown of what changed with CFDI 4.0covers the rest.
How the collections flow runs
Take a supplier that ships to a distributor in Guadalajara and bills in two installments. The day before the first one is due, the system sends a WhatsApp messagewith the exact amount and the payment link inside it, so the customer pays from the message instead of waiting on an email.
If nothing comes back, a second message goes out on the due date. After that the flow stops being automatic: the case moves to a person on the team, who decides whether to call, renegotiate, or hold the next shipment. A bot that keeps pinging on its own is not a collections process.
When the payment lands, two things have to happen at once: the invoice stops showing as open on your side, and the CFDI de pago for that payment goes out inside the deadline above. Those two records are worth more together than apart, which is what a CRM that keeps each customer's full historyis for.
Who owns each step on your side
- Whoever issues the invoice picks PUE or PPD, and that flag is what triggers everything downstream.
- Whoever watches the bank account records the date each payment came in, which is the date the deadline runs from.
- Whoever issues the CFDI de pago needs both of those, in one system.
- Whoever picks up the phone when a customer goes quiet should be named in advance, not the last one to see the message.
What to check before you automate
- Who on your side knows, for each payment that came in last month, whether its CFDI de pago went out before the fifth?
- Does your invoicing vendor tell you which PAC stamps your CFDIs, or do you find out when something bounces?
- If a customer in Mexico goes quiet after two reminders, who calls, and in which language?
If you haven't decided which process to automate first, the criteria for choosing are in where to start automating a business.
Frequently asked questions
Is a CFDI de pago the same as a regular invoice?
No. The regular CFDI documents the sale. The CFDI de pago is a separate document, issued only for invoices flagged PPD, and it records that a specific payment arrived, not the sale.
Can one CFDI de pago cover several payments?
Yes, within limits. Regla 2.7.1.32 allows one document per payment received, or a single one covering all the payments received in a period of one month, as long as they all belong to the same customer.
Which date starts the deadline, the invoice or the payment?
The payment. The rule counts from the month the payment was received, so an invoice issued in March and paid in May counts against May, not against March.
What if a payment lands on the last day of the month?
The deadline doesn't move: it's still the fifth calendar day of the following month. A payment received on the 31st leaves about five days, which is the case worth testing before you trust a system to issue it.
If you want to build this flow for customers in Mexico, a free 30-minute call with an actual person on the team, conducted in Spanish, leaves you with a map of what already exists and what still needs to be built, not a closed quote.
Still handling collections by hand? See how we build custom software connected to your WhatsApp and your invoicing.
