Breakdown of Mikäli asiakkaat eivät ole liittäneet kuitteja, käsittely viivästyy.
olla
to be
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
kuitti
receipt
asiakas
the customer
Questions & Answers about Mikäli asiakkaat eivät ole liittäneet kuitteja, käsittely viivästyy.
How is mikäli different from jos, and can I just use jos here?
Mikäli and jos both mean "if", but mikäli is much more formal. It translates well to "in the event that" or "should". You will see it a lot in official instructions, customer service contexts, and legal texts. You could absolutely use jos here, but mikäli matches the professional tone of the sentence better.
Why is kuitteja (receipts) in the partitive case instead of the accusative?
Because the action is negative (eivät ole liittäneet). In Finnish, negative sentences almost always force the object into the partitive case, regardless of whether the action would normally result in a total change or completion.
Why use viivästyy here instead of a different verb for "delay"?
Viivästyä is an intransitive verb, meaning something is delayed or falls behind schedule on its own. The subject here is käsittely (the processing), which simply "gets delayed" from the speaker's perspective. If you wanted to say that someone actively delays the processing, you would use the transitive verb viivästyttää.
Why does the verb liittää take the -neet ending in this sentence?