UK Business Rife With Late Payment 'Double Standards' - CPA

UK Business Rife With Late Payment ‘Double Standards’

25th January 2018.

New research has uncovered that many UK businesses are working under troubling double standards in regards to late payment. While many, if not all, demand prompt payment from their customers, they don’t commit to this with their own suppliers. Most businesses are part of a supply chain and all transactions are interconnected; so if suppliers are not paid on time, they can’t pay their customers on time, and more than one business is affected. Here at the Credit Protection Association, we not only aid our members in their own late invoices, but we also advise them on the importance of paying their own.

According to a new survey by eProcurement software company Wax Digital, while 64 percent of senior finance managers ‘sack’ customers for consistent late payment, only 27 percent always pay their own suppliers on time and 69 percent admit to being frequent late payers.

Over 200 executives were questioned independently by Sapio research on behalf of Wax Digital in late 2017.

Most delays were not unintentional but down to processes that are in desperate need of improvement. Many blamed factors such as invoice processing timescales and internal errors, as well as inaccurate or unclear invoices.

Deliberate or not, these factors need to be addressed, despite 12 percent dismissing late payment as “the norm”.

Daniel Ball, director at Wax Digital, acknowledges that not all cases of late payment are the result of a vicious disregard for contract terms, and he believes it’s something “very simple to solve”.

Late payment is damaging to businesses of all shape and size. This means whether you’re a big or small company, as well as whether you’re a supplier, a buyer or a blue-chip. Particularly after the Carillion crisis, it became clear how vulnerable the relationship is between firm and supplier. The failure of a company not only affects their employees and their shareholders, it also affects all who they do business with. Here at the Credit Protection Association, we utilise various products to not only help our customers through late payers, but also to deter future bad payers, all the while encouraging our prompt payment mantra. CPA fervently believes in prompt payment and advocates it through our website ‘pay on time’! Please get in touch with CPA for help and advice and lets put late payment where it belongs- safely in the past!