Business 2 Business Payments Improve Again (2 January 2010)
First off – Happy New Year!
As a follow up to my previous blog post I see that Experian have now produced their report for November detailing payment patterns and once again their is a small improvement in the average time taken by businesses in the UK to settle their bills. The improvement month on month is minimal but the figures do show an improvement from 23.52 days beyond terms in November 2008 to 20.57 days in the same month 2009.
This does still mean that payments – on average – are being received 3 weeks beyond the due date.
You can, as someone once said, prove anything with statistics but these figures do once again show the importance of ensuring you do everything you can to be top of the list when payments are being made – i.e. credit control
More tips will follow as we move into 2010 (is that ‘twenty ten’ or ‘two thousand and ten’?) but in a nutshell ensure your invoices are raised correctly, first time, and that you speak with your customers before payment is due to make sure the invoice has been received safe and sound and they know how to pay and when it is due.
Best wishes for the New Year.