Letter to the Payment Times Reporting Regulator of Australia on its August 2026 update

To: The Payment Times Reporting Regulator, Australia

From: Harpreet Singh, Chair, Cashflow Council, Manchester, United Kingdom; and Rapporteur, Cashflow Council

Letter to the Payment Times Reporting Regulator of Australia on its August 2026 update

Dear Payment Times Reporting Regulator,

We write on behalf of the Cashflow Council of the Founders Assembly, a global assembly of small-business owners. We are grateful for the work involved in collecting and reporting payment-time information. Comparable evidence can help small suppliers understand the conditions they face, help buyers identify where their own practices fall short, and help public authorities judge whether existing policy is working.

This letter is dated 4 August 2026. We offer our evidence and requests for consideration in the Regulator’s reporting work, including any subsequent update.

Who we are and our mandate

The Founders Assembly brings together owners of small businesses across countries and sectors. Its members may participate anonymously; their individual businesses are not named in our reporting. The Cashflow Council examines payment practices that affect small suppliers. Our mandate is to identify recurring problems through reports, assess whether they show a consistent pattern, develop proposed responses, consult publicly, and submit standards or recommendations to an Assembly ballot. We then communicate adopted positions to the people and institutions able to act on them.

Our Council’s current work includes CF-001, a proposed 15-Day Pay Standard. It asks large buyers to pay small suppliers within 15 days of an undisputed invoice, apply interest automatically when payment is late, and publish payment-time information. The draft is not an Australian law, and it has not been adopted as an Assembly standard as of the date of this letter. Its consultation closed on 24 September 2026 and its ballot opened on 26 October 2026; neither event has occurred as of 4 August. We mention the proposal only to explain the Council’s interest in payment-time measurement and its potential uses.

Evidence in Council records

As of 4 August, the Cashflow Council had 305 members from 48 countries and had received 997 reports from 50 countries. These are Council totals, not a representative survey of all small businesses. They are reports submitted to a voluntary assembly and should be interpreted as evidence of reported experience, not as a population estimate or a direct measure of the prevalence of late payment in any country.

The median amount at stake in the Council’s reported cases was approximately US$4,590. This figure describes the reported amount at stake; it is not an estimate of average arrears, an Australian-dollar amount, or a measure of the total economic cost of late payment. The eight countries with the most reports were Canada (124), the United States (121), the United Kingdom (102), India (82), Spain (45), South Africa (43), Australia (43), and Italy (39). The remaining reports came from other countries among the 50 represented. The figures are counts of reports, not counts of distinct suppliers or buyers.

The 814 reports classified as client-pays-late and the 183 classified as supplier-terms account for the 997 reports in this breakdown. These labels describe the situation recorded in our reporting system; they are not legal findings and do not establish that a particular buyer breached a contract or a statutory duty. The distinction is relevant to measurement: a supplier may experience a delayed payment, while the stated payment term itself may also be a source of concern. A useful reporting system should make clear which phenomenon each published measure captures.

Reported team sizes were: just me, 37 per cent; 2–9 people, 42 per cent; 10–49 people, 16 per cent; and 50–249 people, 5 per cent. These are the team-size categories in the Council’s records. Our aggregate dataset as of this letter’s date does not provide a verified breakdown by industry or economic sector. If a sector classification is useful to the Regulator, we can discuss a careful, privacy-protective approach to categorising reports, subject to the limits of our data and the consent of contributors.

Australia accounted for 43 reports in this Council dataset. This is a small, self-selected group of submissions and cannot be treated as a national estimate. It does not establish the payment behaviour of Australian buyers generally, nor can the Council’s median amount be assumed to represent the amounts at stake in the Australian reports. We present the country count because it demonstrates that Australian experiences are present in our reporting, while being explicit about what the count cannot show.

Policy context and limits of this letter

The Payment Times Reporting Scheme is the Australian reporting framework relevant to the Regulator addressed here. The sources cited in this letter do not set out the scheme’s detailed statutory requirements or a pre-4 August 2026 Australian performance figure. The Regulator’s August 2026 update is later than this letter’s date. We would welcome an opportunity to compare our aggregates with the Regulator’s published measures once the relevant material is available, while respecting differences in definitions, populations, and collection methods.

Other jurisdictions illustrate that payment-time policy can combine different tools, but they do not determine what Australia should adopt. In the United Kingdom, the Late Payments Bill was introduced in the House of Lords on 19 May 2026. The government’s published account describes a 60-day maximum term, mandatory interest at 8 per cent above the base rate, and adjudication and fine powers for the Small Business Commissioner; import and export contracts are exempt from the cap.¹ These are features of the UK proposal and should not be mistaken for Australian rules.

India offers a different statutory case. The cited Indian material describes a 15-day payment period for micro and small enterprises where there is no written agreement, and a maximum of 45 days where there is one, alongside tax and interest consequences for delayed payment.² This comparison is not a recommendation to transplant another country’s law. It shows why reporting should distinguish the time agreed, the time actually taken, the type of supplier covered, and the consequence attached to delay.

Requests to the Regulator

We respectfully ask the Regulator to consider the following actions in its reporting and engagement with suppliers and buyers:

1. Publish definitions alongside every headline measure. State clearly how payment time is calculated, including the start and end points, treatment of disputed invoices, credit notes and partial payments, and whether the measure concerns invoice value, invoice count, or supplier experience. A figure is more useful when readers can determine exactly what it measures.

2. Show the distribution, not only a single average. Where the available data permit, publish median payment time and a distribution across meaningful time bands, alongside any average. Averages can conceal a long tail of very late payments. The Council’s own median amount at stake is not a payment-time measure, but it reinforces the importance of naming the statistic and its unit rather than presenting a number without context.

3. Make the reporting comparable over time. Explain changes to definitions, coverage, reporting periods, or calculation methods, and identify any break in the series. Where feasible, provide a consistent historical series or explain why a direct comparison cannot be made. Readers should be able to distinguish an actual change in payment practice from a change in measurement.

4. Present supplier size and sector carefully. Publish suitable breakdowns by supplier size and economic sector if the underlying data support them and disclosure risks can be managed. Explain the classification system and any suppression of small groups. We specifically note that our own data do not contain a verified sector breakdown as of this letter; we ask for responsible sector reporting, not for a sector conclusion to be drawn from our submissions.

5. Make visible the difference between reported terms and actual payment. A published view that distinguishes agreed terms from time taken to pay, and identifies how disputed invoices are treated, would help suppliers and buyers interpret the figures. It would also help prevent the mistaken assumption that every report of a late payment establishes a breach of law or contract.

6. Explain how small suppliers can use the information. Consider providing a concise guide for suppliers on how to interpret published payment-time information, how to submit a concern or correction, and where to seek further assistance. Make clear what the Regulator can and cannot do with an individual complaint. Clear signposting is valuable even where a public report is designed primarily for aggregate comparison.

7. Protect confidentiality while improving the evidence base. Provide a clear account of how submitted information is checked, aggregated, retained, and protected. Where possible, describe limitations such as non-response, self-selection, or missing data. Suppress or combine cells where publication could identify a supplier, particularly where a small number of businesses contribute to a category.

8. Invite structured input from small suppliers. Offer a route for small businesses and their representative organisations to comment on definitions and usability before reporting changes are finalised. A short, accessible consultation can identify cases where a technically correct measure is difficult for suppliers to understand or does not reflect the experience they are trying to report.

These requests concern the usefulness and interpretability of reporting. They do not ask the Regulator to endorse the Council’s proposed 15-day standard, to treat our voluntary reports as a representative sample, or to reach findings about any named buyer. We recognise that a public reporting body must work within its authority and the quality of the information it receives.

Offer of anonymised data

The Cashflow Council is willing to discuss sharing a suitably anonymised aggregate extract with the Regulator for research or methodological discussion. At minimum, an initial exchange could cover the definitions of our report categories, the time period represented, the country and team-size breakdowns set out above, and the limits of our dataset. Any more detailed disclosure would require appropriate review for confidentiality, re-identification risk, and consistency with contributors’ expectations.

We would not provide names of members or their businesses. Nor would we represent a narrative as verified evidence against a specific buyer. If the Regulator considers a data exchange useful, we suggest first agreeing in writing on its purpose, permitted use, security arrangements, retention period, and whether any resulting analysis would be published. We would also welcome a discussion of how the Council’s self-selected reports might be compared with administrative or scheme data without implying that the sources have identical coverage or definitions.

Closing

Small suppliers often have limited capacity to absorb uncertainty about when an invoice will be paid. Reliable, intelligible reporting cannot resolve every payment dispute, but it can make practices more visible and help direct attention to the questions that matter. We hope the requests in this letter are useful to the

Regulator as it considers how payment-time information can serve suppliers, buyers, and the public.

Annex: sources and evidentiary notes

1. United Kingdom government and Small Business Commissioner materials on the Late Payments Bill and government consultation response. These sources are cited only for the UK policy comparison in paragraph 13; they are not statements about Australian law.

2. Legal500 material on the Indian provisions identified in paragraph 14. This source is cited only as a comparative case and does not establish Australian policy.

3. Cashflow Council internal aggregate data, exact figures as of 4 August 2026, held in Council records. These are voluntary reports and member counts, not a representative survey. Council records contain no verified sector breakdown.

This document does not cite or describe the Australian regulator’s August 2026 update, because that update is later than the date of this letter. It also does not rely on later Australian reporting or policy material.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. UK Late Payments Bill: what it could mean for your business — Small Business Commissioner
2. Late payment consultation: time to pay up — government response
3. Payments to micro and small enterprises: implications under section 43B(h) — Legal500