Why Small Companies Are Taking Longer to Pay

Small business owners are taking longer to pay their bills.

Five major industries are seeing their average accounts-payable days rising, according to a new study from the Raleigh-based small-business research firm Sageworks. Taking an average 40 days to make a payment, manufacturing firms are delaying the most, while real-estate businesses, which were at 10 days in 2009, are now at nearly 20 days. For retailers, it took 24 days to pay last year, but now it’s more like 34 days.

Although the latest survey of small-business economic trends from the National Federation of Independent Business showed growing pessimism among entrepreneurs, the explanation that hard times are causing companies’ accounts payables to creep might not be entirely accurate.

So what’s behind the uptick in accounts-payable days? And is this trend good news or bad? Here are a few theories on what could be driving longer payment cycles:

Client payment slowdown. Major corporations that have small businesses as subcontractors are paying slower. Giant companies are sitting on a big wad of cash right now, and they’re not letting go of it easily. If clients take longer to pay, small businesses, which often function check to check, tend to pay their vendors slowly, too.

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