A small business wastes 15 days tracking down payment delays each year

The Sage survey - “The Domino Effect: The Impact of Late Payments” - was carried out in 11 countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, and others. More than 3,000 companies took part in the study to understand the problem of late payments and how it affected their organizations.

In the US, 25, 23, and 21 % of companies respectively stated tracking down late payments impacted their investment, staff pay, and staff commission. As to the reason why the payments were late, 34 % gave no reason, 30 %t said it was pending, and another 20 % said they paid at periods.

So what are the barriers when it comes to chasing late payments? The reasons given by US companies include protecting client relationships (32 %), lacking dedicated resource (13%), and lacking time (10 %).

The impact is even greater for small businesses, as they rely on these funds to run the day-to-day operations of their company like ordering supplies, paying employees and investing in growth.