UK late payment: the key figures
| Metric | Benchmark | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Total owed to UK SMEs in overdue invoices at any one time | £50bn to £70bn | Estimates vary by study |
| Average amount a small business is owed past terms at any time | £22,000 to £25,000 | Per-business average |
| Share of small-business invoices that are overdue | around 49% | Roughly half of all invoices |
| How long businesses wait beyond agreed terms to be paid | about 27 to 32 days | On top of the agreed due date |
| Small businesses that saw at least one late payment last year | around 90% | Late payment is near-universal |
| UK small-business closures a year linked to late payment | about 50,000 | FSB estimate |
| Typical SME days sales outstanding (DSO) | 30 to 60 days | Wide planning benchmark |
| Share of receivables overdue at any one time | 30% to 50% | Wide planning benchmark |
Benchmarks compiled from public UK data, not Kelo customer data. Totals vary between studies and are updated periodically, so confirm against the sources below.
How long payment really takes
Agreed terms are the starting line, not the finish. UK small businesses typically wait about 27 to 32 days past the due date on top of the terms they set, and a typical SME carries 30 to 60 days of sales outstanding at any time. The longer a balance sits, the less likely it is to be paid without a chase, which is why order of chasing matters more than volume of reminders.
What it costs
Late payment is linked by the FSB to roughly 50,000 UK small-business closures a year. The cost is rarely one bad payer; it is the cash tied up across many slow ones, plus the hours lost to chasing between client work. Work out your own exposure with the late-payment interest calculator, or see the whole playbook in the guide to getting paid and how to reduce late payments.
Sources
Compiled from published UK late-payment research, including the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the UK Small Business Commissioner, Xero Small Business Insights, and the Office for National Statistics. Figures are estimates and move over time; confirm the current numbers against the primary sources.