It's not often a company like ours faces problems with payments, after all most of our customers are more than happy to be charged by us as this usually means we have recovered what they are owed. But like all businesses we occasionally encounter issues with clients that don't like to pay on time, or in fact at all. That's why we've chosen to open our "2018 Safe Collections - Late Payment Hall of Shame" featuring companies that have failed to honour their agreements with us.
Just under half of large businesses admit to paying suppliers late to protect their own cash flow, according to a new report.
In the UK Business Payments Barometer 2018 survey carried out by Bottomline, 44% of businesses with between 250 and 10,000 employees said they pay invoices late in order to protect liquidity or prioritise other payments.
This comes just a year after the government introduced its Duty to Report (DTR) regulation requiring qualifying large businesses to publish information on payment practices, including average time taken to settle invoices.
Applicable to any company with more than 250 employees, £36m turnover or £18m on the balance sheet, the government hoped DTR would help to tackle late payment culture by bringing the worst excesses out into the open. If these latest survey figures are taken as a gauge, it is yet to work.
Read more: Duty to Report Failing to Tackle Self-Interest in Late Payments
Directors who dissolve companies to write off debts, only to start up near identical businesses shortly after, could be banned and fined under new regulations.
The government has moved to crackdown on so-called ‘phoenix companies’ as part of a raft of changes intended to protect employees and pension holders when companies are shut down.
Retail tycoon Mike Ashley has been quick to position himself as champion of the high street after buying House of Fraser out of administration. But whether suppliers, pension holders and even landlords will be celebrating the takeover is questionable.
The Sports Direct owner snapped up the struggling department chain for £90m just an hour after entered administration last week, vowing to keep open at least 80% of its UK stores open.
Read more: House of Fraser ‘Rescue’ a Hostile Takeover for Suppliers
The government’s much-vaunted ‘Northern Powerhouse’ may have turned out to be little more than a catchy phrase scribbled down on the back of a Chancellor’s fag packet. But at least contractors and small suppliers operating in the North of England’s biggest cities are more likely than most to get paid on time.
In a survey carried out by FreeAgent, small traders in Manchester reported the lowest rate of late payments nationwide. According to the findings, 86% of invoices issued by freelancers and microbusinesses in the city are paid by the due date - which compares very favourably to the national average of 52%.
More than a quarter of UK businesses have suffered negative consequences from another company becoming insolvent in the past six months.
A survey carried out by R3 revealed that one in 10 businesses have suffered a ‘very negative’ impact from a customer or supplier becoming insolvent since the start of 2018, while another 16% reported a ‘somewhat negative’ effect.
The figures come after a sharp spike in the number of companies being declared insolvent in the first quarter of this year. Led by the high profile collapses of Carillion, Toys R Us and Maplin, the number of insolvency cases rose an alarming 13% from the previous quarter.
Read more: Insolvency Domino Effect Strikes Down One in Four UK Companies
The total value of overdue payments owed to UK small businesses has rocketed by an astonishing £1bn in just six months, according to a new report.
The survey by small business financiers Liberis found that the average SME was waiting on £11,000 in outstanding payments. When extrapolated across the country’s 5.5 million small businesses, that generates a total figure of £14.9bn - up by a billion on findings from just six months ago.
Read more: Late Payments to SMEs Soar By £1 BILLION in Six Months
The Church of England fears that it could be forced to sell off some of its prized cathedrals in order to stave off bankruptcy - and is seeking to pass news laws to prevent that happening.
At the General Synod of York - the CoE’s equivalent to Parliament - bishops were presented with a report detailing the financial difficulties of diocese including Exeter and Peterborough, both of which are centred around historic cathedrals.
