A month for turning evidence into a standard

Dear members,

July was the month we put a proposed answer on the page. That is a meaningful step, but it is not the finish line. The 15-Day Pay Standard is still a draft. It has not been adopted, and the people and businesses affected by it have not yet had their public consultation. Our job now is to make the proposal clear enough to test, and open enough to improve.

What moved this month

On 21 July, the Cashflow Council issued draft resolution RC/CF/2026/L.1, the 15-Day Pay Standard. It proposes that large buyers pay small suppliers within 15 days of an undisputed invoice, that interest be applied automatically when payment is late, and that buyers publish their payment times. The draft turns the evidence and the pattern test into a practical proposal. It is not a claim that every late payment has the same cause, or that every invoice can be resolved in the same way.

Our process matters here. CF-001 passed the five-part pattern test on 23 June: Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. That test is a threshold for action, not a substitute for consultation. A pattern can be real and still require careful attention to exceptions, implementation and unintended effects. The draft must now meet that scrutiny.

July also brought confirmation of the Fellows by ballot and the Secretariat’s second-quarter report. The Council’s work is part of a wider assembly effort: the Assembly had 1,214 seated members across 49 countries as of 27 July, and 3,494 reports from 50 countries. These are people and submissions, not a census of all small businesses. They are, however, a substantial body of evidence from owners describing what happens when ordinary business commitments collide with payment delays.

The numbers behind CF-001

As of 27 July, the Cashflow Council had 290 members in 48 countries and had received 943 reports from 50 countries. The reported median amount at stake was approximately US$4,640. Of the reports, 771 concerned a client paying late and 172 concerned supplier terms. There were 196 reports in the last 30 days.

The reports came from very different places and businesses. By country, the largest counts were Canada, 116; the United States, 115; the United Kingdom, 96; India, 78; Spain and Australia, 42 each; South Africa, 40; and Italy, 35. In the Council’s team-size figures, 38% were sole operators, 42% had 2–9 people, 16% had 10–49, and 5% had 50–249. Those percentages are rounded. The practical point is that late payment is not a concern limited to one country or one kind of small firm.

These numbers do not tell us that every small supplier wants exactly the same rule. They tell us the problem is repeated, spread across borders and associated with real sums of money. They also remind us to be precise: reports are evidence of experience, not proof that every buyer or sector behaves alike.

A member pattern, without pretending it is one person’s file

We protect members’ anonymity, and we should not turn a handful of details into an identifiable case.

A small supplier completes work for a client and sends an invoice. The payment does not arrive when expected. Meanwhile, the supplier’s own bills and supplier terms keep moving. The owner has to spend time following up, and money that should have been available for running the business remains tied up in the unpaid invoice.

That sequence is simple to describe and difficult to live with. The supplier may have done the work correctly and may have an undisputed invoice, yet still has to carry the uncertainty and the cost of waiting. The draft responds to that imbalance by setting a clear proposed deadline, making late interest automatic rather than dependent on a small supplier pursuing it, and asking buyers to publish their payment performance. Each element needs testing. Together, they are intended to make timely payment a normal practice rather than a favour a supplier must request.

What we learned

First, an invoice is not just an administrative item. When payment is delayed, the burden of financing the gap often falls on the smaller party. Second, a standard has to be usable. “Undisputed invoice” and the point from which the 15 days run need to be expressed clearly, so that neither side is left guessing about how the rule works. Third, transparency matters alongside the deadline. Published payment times give suppliers information before they agree to work, and give buyers a reason to look at their own processes.

We have also learned not to confuse a strong proposal with a completed decision. We have written the draft; members and other interested parties still need to challenge it. We should expect questions about genuine disputes, administrative burden, cross-border transactions and how automatic interest would work in practice. The consultation is where those questions belong. We will record the feedback, consider revisions openly and take the resulting proposal to an Assembly ballot.

Our earlier letters are part of that work. The Council wrote to the UK Department for Business and Trade and the Small Business Commissioner on the late-payment consultation response, to India’s Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises on enforcement of existing provisions, and to accounts-payable teams in an open letter. Those actions do not replace the standard we are developing. They make the same point in different settings: rules and commitments matter only when the payment process follows them.

What comes next

• 25 August: the public consultation on CF-001 is scheduled to open. Please read the draft before commenting, and be specific about what would make it workable or what needs to change.

• 24 September: the consultation is scheduled to close. We will review the submissions and publish the next stage of the work through the Council’s process.

• 26 October–9 November: the Assembly ballot on CF-001 is scheduled. Members will decide whether to adopt the standard after consultation and consideration of any revision.

Until then, please keep reporting what happens—not only when a payment is late, but also when a process works well, when an invoice is genuinely disputed, or when a rule creates a problem we have not anticipated. Useful evidence is specific and honest. It does not need to name a company, and it should never expose a member who has chosen to remain anonymous.