Please confirm receipt

The Chinese business communication loop is not complete until someone says 收到了 (shōudào le — received). This is not bureaucracy; it is a cultural expectation of closure. When you send a payment notification, a design file, a specification document, or any information that requires action, the phrase 请确认收到 (qǐng quèrèn shōudào) is how you close the loop and create a record that the information transfer happened. Without it, you are operating in a communication gray zone where the supplier might claim they never received your file and you have no way to prove otherwise.

WeChat has fundamentally shaped how receipt confirmation works in Chinese business. On WeChat, messages show a “read” indicator, and many Chinese suppliers treat this as equivalent to a confirmation — if they read it, they received it, and that is enough. This is not laziness; it is the platform’s own communication norm. But from a business documentation perspective, a read receipt is not the same as a written acknowledgment, especially for payment confirmations and specification approvals. The phrase 收到请文字回复 (shōudào qǐng wénzì huífù — please reply in text when received) makes it explicit that you need a written response, not just a read indicator. Use this when the information is legally or operationally significant. For routine updates, the read receipt is culturally sufficient and pushing for a written reply can come across as unnecessarily formal.

Payment receipts deserve special attention because they are the most consequential type of confirmation in supplier communication. When you make a payment and send the bank slip (水单, shuǐdān), the supplier’s confirmation of receipt is your assurance that production will begin. The standard exchange is: you send 款已付, 水单见附件, 请确认收到 (kuǎn yǐ fù, shuǐdān jiàn fùjiàn, qǐng quèrèn shōudào — payment made, bank slip attached, please confirm receipt). The supplier replies 收到了 (shōudào le — received) or 款已收到 (kuǎn yǐ shōudào — payment received), sometimes with the amount and date for clarity. If you do not receive this acknowledgment within 24 hours on a business day, follow up. International wires occasionally go astray, get held for compliance checks, or land in the wrong account. Silence after a payment notification is not just discourteous — it could mean the money has not actually arrived, and you need to investigate.

There is a subtle relationship between 请确认收到 and the broader concept of 对账 (duìzhàng — account reconciliation) in Chinese business. Confirming receipt of individual messages and payments is the micro level. Periodically, mature supplier relationships move to macro-level reconciliation where both parties verify that all payments, invoices, and shipments match over a given period. The phrase 我们对一下账 (wǒmen duì yīxià zhàng — let’s reconcile accounts) is the natural evolution of 请确认收到 over time — from confirming individual transactions to confirming the entire relationship ledger. For buyers placing regular orders, establishing a monthly reconciliation rhythm with this phrase prevents the accumulation of small discrepancies that become major disputes.