A study of UK good business practice by Crunch Accounting today publishes a league table, revealing which UK regions are home to the best and the worst businesses when it comes to paying their invoices. Blackpool tops the table, with invoices paid on average within 7 days, 16 days faster than the national average of 23 days. But Shrewsbury based businesses sit at the bottom of the table, taking on average 46.5 days to settle payments.
The research study, from Crunch Accounting, uses anonymised data from over 3,500 small businesses across the UK based on Crunch’s online accounting software over the course of a year (2012/2013 financial year).
Other locations with conscientious business owners include North London, Portsmouth, Nottingham , Carlisle and Birmingham, which is sixth in the table for prompt payment.
Darren Fell, Managing Director of Crunch Accounting, said the statistics reveal just how important it is for small business owners to develop a healthy invoicing system, he said: “Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, and we thought it would be interesting to get some ‘on the ground’ figures to show how good British businesses are at settling invoices. It’s surprising to see such a huge difference across the UK regions, but we’d hope that businesses at the bottom of the league table take a few pointers from their peers in the top performing areas of Blackpool, North London and Portsmouth.”
The town with the slowest UK payment times is Shrewsbury, where small business owners take an average of 46.5 days to pay their invoices – more than twice the national average.
Other slack SMEs can be found in Bath (43 days average payment), Wigan (42 days), Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (40 days), Salisbury (39 days), Enfield (39 days) and Wolverhampton (39 days).
