The Late & The Slow Payment Watchlist Autumn 2023

Key insights

• We identified 110 serial late paying companies have been paying late every year since 2018, when statutory payment reporting was introduced – 55 are manufacturing companies

• Between March-August 2023, 13% of large companies reported paying more than 50% of their invoices late

• However, amongst the late payers, there has been a steep increase (68% to 86%) in companies paying over 70% of invoices late

• Compared to 2022, there is a 10% increase in companies reporting average payment times of over 80 days 

In February 2023, Good Business Pays published the first version of our Late & Slow Watchlist to provide a list of companies who are reporting the worst payment performance figures as part of the Government’s Payment Practices & Performance Regulations. At that time, we committed to providing an updated list every six months. Why six months? Because the regulations state that large companies have to report their payment times every six months. In this way we can track over time who are the serial late payers and indeed the serial fast payers. We feel it is important to make this information available for anyone to see and have been delighted that a growing number of large companies are responding to calls for improvement and making big and positive changes to their payment performance. Please check our Outcomes page to find out more.

Given the high level of interest in the Watchlist and having listened to feedback from users, we have made a few changes to improve the Autumn 2023 Watchlist. The most significant change is we have included ALL companies that fit our criteria for late and slow payers, not just the 40 worst. This ensures full transparency. We have also included a list of Serial Late Payers – companies who have consistently reported high levels of late paying every year for the past five years (since reporting records began).

Analysing data from the 2,300 companies that reported payment performance between March 1st and August 31st 2023, Good Business Pays identified:

• The Late Payers: Who report paying more than 50% of their invoices later than agreed terms and report taking more than 50 days to pay their invoices.
• The Slow Payers: Who report an average time to pay of more than 80 days.
• Serial Late Payers: Who have reported late payment every year since reporting began in 2018 demonstrating the culture of late and slow payment is engrained. 

It is important to say that many companies will give varying reasons to do with their payment practices for late or slow payment performance. However, regardless of reasons, Good Business Pays focuses on the outcomes felt by the suppliers (i.e. how long they wait to get paid). But in the interests of full transparency, we have included the link to the original source data for every company listed below. There you can read any reasons they might have for numbers being the way they are.

Companies Who Are Late Payers

We define ‘Late Payers’ as the companies who report paying more than 50% of their invoices later than agreed terms and report taking more than 50 days to pay their invoices.

Each column can be sorted by clicking on the column title.

Companies Who Are Slow

We define ‘Slow Payers’ as the companies who report an average time to pay of more than 80 days.

Each column can be sorted by clicking on the column title.

The Serial Late Payers

We define serial late payers as the companies who have reported late payment every year since reporting began in 2018, demonstrating the culture of late and slow payment appears to be engrained.

Each column can be sorted by clicking on the column title.