Suppliers to some of the UK’s largest manufacturing firms face agonising delays of almost eight weeks for payment to be received, a new survey by BACS Payment Schemes has revealed. On average, each SME is waiting on approximately £40,000 each, meaning a total of close to £10 billion is due in overdue payments. When chasing up payments, SMEs were increasingly frustrated by lacklustre excuses. For example, 18% were informed that they had simply forgotten to pay. Spokesman for BACS, Mike Hutchinson, said: “Waiting eight working weeks after a payment is due before receiving the money could be catastrophic for vulnerable companies, particularly at a time when the economy is struggling and cashflow is key.” John Colburn, Corporate Manager for SBF, felt that SMEs could benefit from external finance facilities to help release locked-up cash: “Cashflow solutions do exist for SMEs struggling with late payments, one of which is invoice finance”. “Invoice finance works to release cash that gets tied up in unpaid invoices and can be useful for many firms working on a business-to-business basis”, he concluded. If you’d like to find out more about how invoice finance facilities such as invoice factoring and invoice discounting work, why not browse our website for more information, email us at info@skiptonbf.co.uk or give us a call on 0845 602 9354.
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