Late invoice payments cost the average SME £22,000 a year

Nearly two thirds of UK SME invoices were paid late in the past year.

Late payments cost the average SME £22,000 a year and lead to 50,000 business closures annually.

Most businesses treat that as a finance problem. It is not. It is a data problem.

By the time an invoice reaches the finance team, the damage is usually already done. A missing reference. An incorrect format. Data that does not match what the receiving system expects. Each triggers a query. Each query triggers a delay.

EDI Plus processed 6.9 million invoices in 2025. Just 0.11% of all transactions that year required any support team intervention. In every case, the issue came from a trading partner configuration error. Caught before it caused a delay.

Businesses that get paid on time tend to have one thing in common. Their data is clean before an invoice is ever raised.

How much is payment friction costing your business right now?