Late payments are sinking small businesses

The Government have announced a culture change in the way small businesses tackle larger organisations who fail to make payments on time. The latest monthly figures from Bacs have revealed that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are owed a total of 26.8 billion in overdue payments.

The Small Business Commissioner announced it will help handle disputes over late payments in order to save small companies some of the £10.8 billion that they spend each year in trying to recover overdue payments. The commission also plan to tackle the imbalance when negotiating disputes as well as providing advice , investigating complaints and working towards fairer payment practices.

It is hoped that these measures will impact positively on the thousands of small businesses who find themselves out of pocket due to late and disputed payments, it is thought this is one contributing factor to why half of all start-ups fail within the first 5 years.