Introducing the UK Payment Performance Monitor and PaySavi Payment Assessment
Turning statutory company reports into accessible evidence and practical insights
Late payment has been debated by businesses, policymakers and successive Governments for many years. Its effects can be particularly serious for smaller suppliers, where delayed cash restricts investment, reduces confidence, increases borrowing requirements and, in the most severe cases, threatens the viability of otherwise successful businesses.
Yet one of the persistent challenges is not simply demonstrating that a problem exists. It is making the available evidence sufficiently accessible to understand the scale of the issue, examine individual companies and make better informed commercial and policy decisions.
The UK Parliament is reviewing the issue and the Commercial Payments Bill sets a 60-day maximum limit for invoices to be paid. Measuring and monitoring the impact of the proposed legislation needs to be built into the implementation.
And a substantial body of information already exists. Thousands of the largest UK businesses are required to publish reports about their payment practices, policies and performance, typically twice during each financial year.
These reports include average payment times, the proportions of payments made within different time bands and the percentage of payments not made within agreed terms.
The information is publicly available through a Government service. However, the volume and structure of the underlying records can make it difficult for Parliamentarians, businesses, journalists, researchers and members of the public to interpret either the wider national picture or the implications of an individual company’s results.
PaySavi has, therefore, developed two connected resources:
the UK Payment Performance Monitor, which presents company-level and national evidence
the PaySavi Payment Assessment, which helps users interpret a company’s reported performance against their own commercial expectations
Together, they move beyond simply reproducing payment data.
The UK Payment Performance Monitor
The Monitor is a free public resource that transforms the latest eligible UK Government payment practices reports (refreshed once a week) into searchable company information and a national view of reported payment performance.
Users can search for an individual reporting company and examine its latest reported results for paying invoices, including:
average time to pay
the percentage paid within 30 days
the percentage paid between 31 and 60 days
the percentage paid after day 60
the percentage paid outside agreed terms
the end date of the relevant reporting period
The Monitor also provides five headline measures across the entire reporting population of businesses, together with ranked lists showing:
businesses reporting the longest average payment times
businesses reporting the highest proportions of invoices paid after day 60
This combination matters. Looking at one company in isolation provides only part of the picture. The national measures allow users to place an individual result within the wider statutory reporting population of businesses. But providing the figures is only the first stage of the PaySavi proposition.
From reported data to a practical assessment
Two businesses looking at the same prospective customer may reach different conclusions about its reported payment performance. A supplier whose commercial model is based on receiving payment within 30 days will have different requirements from a supplier that can comfortably accommodate 60-day payment.
An average payment time of 45 days may, therefore, be manageable for one supplier but a poor commercial fit for another. This is why the PaySavi Payment Assessment asks the user to enter their own target payment period. It then compares that target with the company’s reported average payment time and wider payment profile.
The Assessment presents three complementary outputs.
The PaySavi Payment Performance Score
Each searched company receives a score out of 100, with a higher score indicating stronger reported payment performance. The score combines four dimensions:
payment within agreed terms
payment within 60 days
overall payment speed
performance movement against the previous reporting period, where suitable prior-period information is available
The current methodology gives the greatest weighting to payment within agreed terms, while also recognising payment within 60 days, overall speed and direction of travel. This matters because no single reported measure tells the whole story.
Average payment time is useful, but it may conceal a wide distribution of outcomes. A company could report a reasonable average while still paying a material proportion of suppliers considerably later. Conversely, the percentage paid after 60 days does not, by itself, establish that those payments breached agreed contractual terms.
The PaySavi score brings the principal reported measures together through a consistent and explainable methodology. It is a PaySavi analytical measure. It is not a Government rating, legal conclusion or conventional credit score.
Your Target Payment Fit
The Your Target Payment Fit assessment considers the relationship between:
the user’s selected target payment period
the company’s reported average payment time
the gap between the target and reported average
the proportion paid within the relevant payment bands
the proportion paid outside agreed terms
It then classifies the apparent fit as:
Good
Moderate
Poor
Very Poor
The result is, therefore, personal to the target entered by the user. It is not simply a universal label attached to the searched company. The implemented assessment deliberately considers more than the reported average. For example, it also takes account of performance within 30 or 60 days and the proportion paid outside agreed terms.
This changes the question from:
“How quickly does this company report paying?” to “How well does this company’s reported payment behaviour fit the terms on which my business needs to operate?”
That is a much more useful starting point for a commercial conversation.
Supplier Payment Exposure
The Supplier Payment Exposure indicator provides a clear summary of the payment performance exposure suggested by the reported data.
It classifies that exposure as:
Low
Moderate
High
Very High
The exposure indicator is derived consistently from the PaySavi Payment Performance Score and its associated evidence bands. It does not predict whether an individual invoice will be paid late, whether a customer will default or whether a contract should be accepted.
Instead, it gives the supplier an accessible indication of whether the reported payment profile may warrant additional attention.
That could prompt sensible questions before a contract is signed:
Are the proposed payment terms suitable for our cashflow model?
Should we negotiate a deposit or staged payments?
Do we need to price the working capital impact into the contract?
Should we request faster payment for high-value invoices?
Is the prospective customer’s reported performance improving or deteriorating?
What level of exposure can our business comfortably absorb?
The Assessment is therefore intended to improve commercial awareness, not make the decision on behalf of the supplier.
What does the current national evidence show?
At its latest successful refresh at the time of writing on 3 August 2026, the Monitor assessed the latest eligible records for 5,855 reporting companies. Within that population:
5,204 companies, 88.9%, reported paying at least some invoices after day 60
440 companies, 7.5%, reported an average payment time above 60 days
923 companies, 15.8%, reported paying at least 25% of invoices after day 60
288 companies, 4.9%, reported paying more than half of their invoices after day 60
These findings illustrate how widespread payment beyond 60 days is within the statutory reporting population. They do not mean that every invoice paid after day 60 was unlawfully late. An invoice may have been paid in accordance with an agreed contractual term exceeding 60 days, may have been disputed or may have been affected by circumstances that are not visible within the headline data.
The Monitor and Assessment, therefore, present reported payment performance as evidence. Their outputs are not findings of legal compliance, non-compliance, misconduct or creditworthiness.
That distinction is essential to their credibility.
Why does this matter now?
The development of these resources coincides with Parliamentary consideration of the Commercial Payments Bill and renewed attention on the effects of commercial payment practices on smaller businesses. The proposed reforms create an opportunity to improve payment behaviour. They also create an important question:
How will Parliament, businesses and the public know whether the legislation has worked?
Passing legislation is not, by itself, the final measure of success. The real test will be whether payment behaviour changes after the new requirements and enforcement arrangements take effect. That requires a reliable starting point. The Monitor provides a national baseline against which future reported performance can be assessed.
As additional reporting periods become available, it should become possible to examine whether:
average payment times are reducing
fewer companies are paying substantial proportions after day 60
payment within agreed terms is improving
particular sectors are improving or deteriorating
companies with historically weak results demonstrate sustained progress
Effective policy should ultimately be judged not only by the legislation enacted, but by the measurable behaviour that follows.
Supporting better informed business decisions
The Monitor and Assessment may also be valuable to SMEs, trade bodies, accountants and business advisers.
Before accepting a major contract, a supplier will commonly consider the commercial strength and creditworthiness of a prospective customer. Reported payment performance can add another important dimension to that assessment. The PaySavi innovation is to make the evidence both accessible and relevant to the individual supplier.
The Monitor answers:
“What has this company reported, and how does it compare with the wider population?”
The Assessment then asks:
“How does that reported performance fit my payment target, and what supplier exposure could it indicate?”
Neither resource replaces proper credit assessment, contractual review or commercial due diligence. They can, however, help businesses identify issues earlier, ask better questions and enter commercial relationships with a clearer understanding of potential working capital exposure.
Why has PaySavi built this?
The wider PaySavi methodology is designed to connect reported payment performance evidence with the circumstances of the business, its operating model and the integrity of its supply chain. That allows potential responses to extend across contracts, processes, technology, payment methods, working capital and governance rather than defaulting to one payment rail or commercial solution.
Our work on payment practices combines:
validated UK Government payment performance data
more than 25 years of payments and fintech experience
direct evidence and conversations with SMEs
engagement with Parliamentarians and industry stakeholders
The objective is not to create a “name and shame” exercise. It is to create an accessible and defensible evidence resource, and use that evidence to help businesses, policymakers and researchers make better-informed decisions.
An invitation to contribute
The UK Payment Performance Monitor and PaySavi Payment Assessment are available free of charge. We welcome feedback from businesses, Parliamentarians, researchers, journalists, trade bodies and other stakeholders on:
additional measures that would be useful
questions the data should help answer
ways to strengthen the Payment Assessment
sector or regional analysis that could support informed scrutiny
evaluation of the Commercial Payments Bill
further evidence that could improve understanding of UK commercial payment behaviour
Payment performance should be capable of being measured openly, interpreted responsibly and improved demonstrably. The UK Payment Performance Monitor and PaySavi Payment Assessment are steps towards making that possible.
Explore the Monitor and assess a company
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