June 27th, 2017.



As every financial decision maker will tell you, getting customer invoices paid on time is the first step to optimising working capital – the lifeblood of every business. Slow payers can reduce the number of decision-making options open to a business, putting pressure on survival, growth or customer relationships. The real question is: ‘What is the best approach to tackling such issues?’

Smallbusiness.co.uk recently conducted a survey of the UK payments landscape to understand the key trends that are impacting financial decision makers. Sadly, the ‘UK Business Payments Barometer 2017: Payments for a New Economy’ report found 45 percent of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cited slow payer ethic as their single greatest challenge to getting their invoices paid on time. This is despite specific initiatives set up to tackle the problem. First was the UK Prompt Payment Code, which Bottomline fully supports and follows themselves. This was founded by the Chartered Institute of Credit Management together with the UK government.

Second is the ‘Duty to Report’ legislation which came into force in April of this year. The aim is to cerb the slow payer problem in response to the £44.5 billion overdue payments owed to SMEs, often by large businesses. Under the new rules, large businesses and limited liability partnerships (LLP) are obliged to publish information about their payment practices and performance twice a year on a government services database. Non-compliance is a criminal offence for which both the company and its directors will be liable to an unlimited fine on conviction.


For the full story at smallbusiness.co.uk CLICK HERE.