You landed a Japanese customer. Now they want a quote, a purchase order, an invoice with a registration number, and a bank transfer.
Nothing here is about your product. It is about the eight or nine documents that sit between a Japanese company deciding to buy and the money reaching your account — and the specific points at which an overseas seller’s paperwork gets sent back.
The order below is the one most Japanese B2B transactions follow. Work through it once before your first invoice rather than after it; a document that comes back costs a month, because the buyer’s payment cycle runs monthly and a missed cut-off waits for the next one.
The order things happen in Japan
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Talks
Your counterpart is gathering material for an internal approval you do not see. What you send has to survive being read by people who were not in the meeting.
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Quote
A price in an email is not a quote. Without a dated document showing tax, validity and payment terms, the approval cannot start.
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Purchase order
They send a purchase order and expect an acknowledgement back, often with a seal. An unanswered order sits there.
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Delivery
Even software gets a delivery note. Without one, the accounting team has no document to match the invoice against.
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Invoice
This is where most overseas invoices come back — missing registration number, no per-rate tax line, a due date that does not match their cycle.
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Payment
Payment arrives by bank transfer on a monthly cycle, short by the transfer fee, under a sender name that may not match the buyer.
What Japanese companies expect from you
- Documents at every stage, dated and numbered, because the approval trail is made of paper rather than conversation.
- The formal company name, written in full, with 御中 after it — not the shortened name on their website.
- Tax shown as its own line, per rate, rather than folded into a single total.
- Payment terms named by you, in their vocabulary, before the first invoice goes out.
- A reply the same business day, even when the reply is "I am looking into it".
Guides for this situation
When to hire someone
| Who | What they are for | Rough cost |
|---|---|---|
| 税理士 (zeirishi, tax accountant) | Anything that turns on your own tax position — registration, consumption tax treatment of cross-border services, whether a payment carries withholding. | ¥30,000–¥80,000 for a one-off consultation is a figure we have seen quoted |
| 行政書士 (gyōseishoshi, administrative scrivener) | Permits, licences and filings with Japanese authorities that are not tax filings. | Varies by filing |
| A lawyer (弁護士, bengoshi) | Contract terms, liability, a dispute over non-payment. | ¥20,000–¥50,000 per hour is a figure we have seen quoted |
Kit for this situation
Need a second pair of eyes?
Send us the quote, invoice or pricing page before it goes to a Japanese buyer and we mark up what their side will stop on. See what a review covers — it opens to a waitlist first.
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