November 2006 - Small Business News

SME's Owed Nearly £16 billion - Are You Losing Money?

Despite more businesses than ever taking action against missing and late payments; the number of SME's experiencing the problem is continuing to rise.

In fact, BACS Payment Schemes Limited has found that SME’s are now owed an astonishing £15.98billion in overdue payments. That means that on average, every single small business in the UK is owed more than £4200!

Just one late payment can affect your cashflow to the extent where your business is at risk; and with such a huge amount of late payment around, you can see just how important it is to have a good credit policy.

Michael Chambers, managing director of BACS, said “The fact that UK SMEs are waiting on £16 billion is staggering and shows that the impact of late payments cannot be underestimated. Late payments now pose a considerable problem for more than half of all SMEs in Great Britain – if this figure continues to rise, the knock on effect for the UK economy could be disastrous. Business and financial managers up and down the country need to tackle late payment issues head on to safeguard the commercial interests of their organisations.”

BizHelp24 can help you in every step of preventing and dealing with late payment:

• Our Credit Reports help you find out whether your business customers are reliable before you offer them credit.
   
• Our free business software helps you to invoice and chase up overdue payments.
   
• Our no collection no fee DebtClaim service helps you get paid if your collection efforts are not successful.