You finished the job and invoiced it the same week. That was 3 months ago. The customer is friendly every time you ring, the money is still not in, and meanwhile every bill you owe has come out of your account on the day it was due. Search for late payment statistics in Australia and you get the same figure quoted everywhere, in articles written this year. Most of the current data says something else. And only some of that data is about a business like yours.
How long do Australian small businesses wait to get paid?
An average of 22.9 days, and about 6 days past the due date.
That is the June quarter 2026 reading from Xero Small Business Insights, published 30 July 2026. One quarter earlier it was 24.2 days to be paid and 6.9 days late, so the direction is good. Xero also tells you to take the June quarter lightly, because the first June estimate usually looks better than it turns out to be.
It is worth knowing how that average is built. Xero counts invoices marked fully paid, and excludes anything still unpaid or paid more than a year late. The worst invoices in the country are not in it at all.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average wait to be paid | 22.9 daysXero Small Business Insights, June quarter 2026 |
| Average days past the due date | 6.0 dayssame source |
| Average payment terms offered by large business | 29 daysPayment Times Reporting Regulator, Reporting Cycle 10 |
| Days in which large business paid 80% of small supplier invoices | 37 dayssame source |
| Days in which large business paid 95% of small supplier invoices | 55 dayssame source |
Why do the national numbers not match your invoices?
Because an average across every invoice in the country flattens the few that hurt you.
The regulator that watches big business publishes more than the average, for exactly that reason. In its August 2026 update, covering the second half of 2025, the Payment Times Reporting Regulator reported average terms of 29 days to small suppliers, 80% of invoices paid within 37 days, and 55 days to get to 95%. Its own summary: "It is taking almost double the average agreed payment term for the vast majority of small business invoices to be paid."
Nearly 6% of invoices from large business to small suppliers took more than 60 days to be paid. You do not feel the 68.5% that arrived within terms. You feel the one that did not, in the week your own BAS is due.
Those figures cover large businesses paying small suppliers. If you invoice homeowners and other one person businesses, none of these companies are your customers, and none of these numbers are yours.
Is late payment getting better or worse in Australia?
It depends entirely on who your customers are.
Late invoices in Australia are getting better and worse at the same time. Among the large businesses that have to report, it got better: the time they take to pay 95% of small supplier invoices came down from 62 days to 55 in one reporting cycle, on-time payment rose from 66.7% to 68.5%, and the regulator says that measure is now under more scrutiny from the businesses reporting it.
Across business to business payments generally, it went the other way. CreditorWatch reported on 20 May 2026 that late payments were at their highest level since January 2020, with 11.37% of invoices in food and beverage services and 7.15% of invoices in construction more than 60 days overdue.
So the companies that have to publish their payment times are improving, while arrears everywhere else keep climbing. That second group is where most small business invoices sit.
Is the 48% late invoice figure still accurate?
No. It counts invoices issued in 2021.
The figure you meet in every article, every social post and every accounting blog is that 48% of Australian small business invoices are paid late, costing $1.1 billion a year. It comes from a Xero release published 7 September 2022, which also found 10% of invoices were paid more than a month overdue. Those numbers were right when they were published, and they are still quoted as though they described this year.
What does late payment cost a small business?
An average of $15,257 across the last financial year.
That is from a survey of 500 Australian small businesses employing up to 200 people, run for Xero by One Picture in February and March 2026, so a business with 180 staff is in the same average as a sole trader. In the same survey, 58% of them named customer payments as their biggest challenge in managing cash flow, just ahead of rising costs.
Can you look up whether a customer pays late before you take the job?
Yes, if that customer is a large business.
Every large business covered by the Payment Times Reporting Scheme has to file how long it takes to pay small suppliers, and those filings are public. Open register.paymenttimes.gov.au and choose Register dashboard, then search the company name, choose the most recent reporting period, and read its 95th percentile payment time. That one figure tells you what to expect on the invoice that goes wrong, which is the invoice worth planning for.
The same register carries the Fast Small Business Payer List. A business earns a place on it by paying 95% of its small supplier invoices in 20 days or less across two reports in a row, with the most recent report no more than 9 months old. Look a company up before you quote it a big job, and you know whether to ask for a deposit.
| Source | What it covers | What it will not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| Xero Small Business Insights | The national average across small business invoices | Anything about the invoices still unpaid |
| Payment Times Reports Register | How individual large businesses pay small suppliers | Anything about households or other small businesses |
| Your own ageing report | Every dollar you are owed today, by customer | Whether a customer you have not billed yet is a slow payer |
Why the chasing does not happen
Because it is awkward, and awkward jobs lose to everything else.
You know the one. The invoice you meant to ring about on Monday, and it is Thursday, and you have been flat out since. It is money you already earned, so it should be the priority, and instead it sits there because the phone call feels like asking a favour of someone you want to work for again.
Nobody solves that with more discipline. It gets fixed when the chasing happens without you having to decide to make the call.
What actually gets an overdue account paid
Four rules, and none of them are about the software.
We run the recovery side of our own subscription publishing business. We track 113 past-due accounts on it, and about 70% of them clear without anyone picking up the phone, checked 14 August 2026. Those are failed card payments rather than trade invoices, so the rate is not a promise about your debtors. The shape of it transfers.
- Blame the process, never the person. The first message assumes the invoice got buried, because most of the time it did, and because a customer who feels accused stops replying.
- Nobody gets chased for money that landed yesterday. It sounds obvious until you have watched a reminder land on a good customer the day after they paid, which is the fastest way to lose one.
- Your biggest account never hears from software about money. You hear about it first, and you ring them.
- Say the real deadline and hold it. One honest date beats a run of vague nudges, and it is the message that gets answered.
Your own number is the only one that matters
It takes about 10 minutes to find.
In Xero it is under Accounting, then Reports, then Aged Receivables Summary. MYOB and QuickBooks both carry an accounts receivable ageing report in their reports list. That gives you the total you are owed today, by customer.
The total is the easy half. What it will not show you is the drift. One customer has always paid at 55 days. Another paid at 20 days for two years and has quietly moved to 45. Your total looks much the same from one month to the next, so the change never surfaces. The steady one is running a system. The other one has a problem, and you want to know about it before they tell you.
You can watch for that yourself: export the ageing report every month and compare it against last month's. It costs you an evening a month, forever, and it loses to the quoting and the invoicing that land on the same evening.
Where to start
Pull the report this week. You will know inside 10 minutes whether you have a late payment problem or a two customer problem.
After that, the job is making the chasing happen without you carrying it. That is our Accounts element pack: a read-only link to your accounting software, so it sees every invoice and payment but cannot touch your books, with each reminder written in your wording and drafted for your approval before it goes anywhere near a customer. Cai, the AI system behind every Coastworks build, does the watching. You do the approving.
What is overdue, what got paid overnight, which customer has slowed down and what is waiting on your say so all arrive together in your morning report. You can watch the whole thing running on one of our demonstration builds. If your Xero reminders are already on and the money is still slow, we wrote up the six places Xero's own reminders stop working.
The Engine is $3,500 and each element pack is $950, listed on the automations we build for small business. We are based on the Sunshine Coast and work Australia-wide by screen share.
If you want us to go through your ageing report with you, answer a few short questions and we will assess it. The consult is 60 minutes for $295, credited to any build.
Sources
Xero Small Business Insights, Australia, June quarter 2026, and its published methodology. Payment Times Reporting Regulator, Regulator's Update August 2026, the Fast Small Business Payer List fact sheet, and the Payment Times Reports Register. CreditorWatch, 20 May 2026. Xero and One Picture, March 2026. Xero, 7 September 2022, counting 2021 invoices. Our own recovery figures, checked 14 August 2026. All external figures rechecked at their own source on 7 September 2026.
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