BRIEFING

The Cost of Delay, Issue 2026-W36: How long is money taking to move, and what is the wait worth?

Published by Marketingz, Laval.

People working side by side at a shared table with laptops

A weekly letter on where money gets stuck between a decision and a payment, and what that wait costs the business doing the waiting. Every figure below links to a dated public source. Where a number is soft or old, we say so, and this week the section on sales cycle length is mostly caveats.

Two questions run through the issue. How long is the lag right now, measured rather than felt. And what is a month of it worth in dollars, which is the part almost nobody writes down.

This is the first issue on this segment, so there is no prior issue to correct.

The short version

- US small businesses were paid an average of 29.3 days after invoicing in the June 2026 quarter, about 8.5 days later than agreed (Xero Small Business Insights, released 30 July 2026).

- 59 percent of QuickBooks small businesses are carrying an invoice 30 or more days overdue, up from 47 percent a year earlier (Intuit QuickBooks 2026 Small Business Late Payments Report, July 2026).

- Two surveys put the average sum owed to a firm with unpaid invoices near the same figure: $17,700 (QuickBooks) and $17,500 (Xero guide, updated 19 August 2026).

- Carrying the average $17,700 receivable for one month on a credit card, at the current 22.15 percent average rate, costs about $327 in interest (Federal Reserve G.19, 8 July 2026).

- There is no current, openable, single figure for how long a typical small-business sale takes from first contact to cash. The invoice-to-payment numbers are solid; the whole-cycle numbers are not.

How long is money actually taking to move right now?

US small businesses were paid on average 29.3 days after invoicing in the June 2026 quarter, about 8.5 days later than agreed, per Xero. Among QuickBooks users, 59 percent carry an invoice 30 or more days overdue. Large public companies collect in a median 46 days.

Xero Small Business Insights, which aggregates anonymised data from tens of thousands of US small businesses using its accounting software, put the June 2026 quarter time-to-be-paid at 29.3 days, up 0.7 days from the March quarter, with the late portion at 8.5 days, down 0.5 (Xero Small Business Insights, United States, released 30 July 2026).

The Intuit QuickBooks 2026 Small Business Late Payments Report, drawing on the QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey of about 5,000 respondents a quarter, found 59 percent of small businesses carrying at least one invoice 30 or more days overdue, against 47 percent a year earlier, and 22 percent with more than a fifth of their invoices in that state. Firms owed money were owed $17,700 on average (Intuit QuickBooks 2026 Small Business Late Payments Report, July 2026). Xero's own guide, updated 19 August 2026, gives a close reading from a different sample: 56 percent of small and midsize businesses owed money at any given time, averaging $17,500 past due (Xero, Late payments are climbing again, 19 August 2026). Two surveys, near the same number.

At the top of the market the collection cycle is longer and getting worse. The Hackett Group's 2025 US Working Capital Survey, covering the top 1,000 US publicly traded non-financial companies, reported a median days sales outstanding of 46 days, against 28 for the top quartile, an 18-day gap, with receivables degrading for a second straight year (The Hackett Group, 18 August 2025). The Billtrust 2026 Accounts Receivable Benchmark, drawn from its own payments network rather than public filings, reports a 2025 average DSO of 39 days, down from 45, with average days delinquent up from 5 to 6 (Billtrust, 4 September 2026). Different populations, so the levels differ. The direction on lateness is the same.

What we cannot tell you: there is no single, current, openable figure for how long a typical small-business sale takes from first contact to cash. Everything above measures invoice to payment, which starts only once the work is won and billed.

Why do B2B deals take months to close before an invoice even exists?

Because more people are now in the room. Gartner's public research describes B2B buying groups of six to ten people, and a May 2025 survey found 74 percent of buying teams show unhealthy conflict during the decision. Finance and procurement now enter smaller deals than they used to.

Gartner's B2B buying research describes a typical complex purchase as involving six to ten decision-makers, each bringing their own information to reconcile (Gartner, The B2B Buying Journey). In a Gartner sales survey reported on 7 May 2025, 74 percent of B2B buying teams demonstrated what Gartner calls unhealthy conflict during the decision process (Gartner, 7 May 2025).

AI has added a research step rather than removing a human one. A Gartner survey of B2B buyers run from August to September 2025, reported on 20 May 2026, found buyers used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase and 45 percent used generative AI, mostly to research vendors, while 69 percent still went to a sales rep to validate what the AI had told them (Gartner, 20 May 2026).

The older anchor, and still the one most quoted, is Gartner's finding that 77 percent of B2B buyers called their most recent purchase very complex or difficult. That reading is from 2019. Treat it as a description of the shape of the problem, not a current measurement.

On total elapsed time the evidence is genuinely thin. Forrester has been quoted putting enterprise technology purchases at 11 to 17 months from first touch to closed deal, but that is a 2024 benchmark and we could not open a current primary source for it within the last 30 days. A 92-day median figure attributed to a "RAIN Group 2025 benchmark" circulates on dozens of marketing blogs; we could not find the underlying report and are not repeating it as fact. If your deals feel slower than they did three years ago, the buying-committee data is the part you can actually cite.

How much worse did late payment get in 2026?

Clearly worse at the small end. The share of QuickBooks small businesses carrying a 30-day-plus overdue invoice rose from 47 to 59 percent year on year. Xero recorded steady improvement through 2025 that reversed in 2026. Large-company receivables have worsened two years running.

The QuickBooks report is the sharpest single data point: a 12-point jump in one year in the share of firms carrying a materially overdue invoice, plus 49 percent saying standard payment-processing times create critical or moderate cash-flow gaps even after the customer has paid (Intuit QuickBooks, July 2026).

Xero's series shows the same turn. After improvement in every quarter of 2025, time to be paid lengthened again across the first half of 2026, from 28.6 days in the March quarter to 29.3 in June. The late portion improved slightly even as total time grew, which Xero reads as customers stretching their terms (Xero, 30 July 2026).

At the top of the market, the Hackett Group attributes a second consecutive year of DSO degradation to customer bargaining power and extended payment terms (The Hackett Group, 18 August 2025), and Billtrust's network shows average days delinquent up one day (Billtrust, 4 September 2026). Three different populations, one direction.

What is a month of that wait actually worth?

Roughly the cost of borrowing that sum for a month, plus any early-pay discount you forgo to end the wait. On $17,700 owed, a 30-day credit-card bridge at the current 22.15 percent average rate runs about $327. A forgone 2/10 net 30 discount on a $5,000 invoice is $100.

The cleanest way to price a delay is the cost of covering it. The Federal Reserve's G.19 release put the average rate on credit card accounts assessed interest at 22.15 percent in the second quarter of 2026 (Federal Reserve G.19, Consumer Credit, 8 July 2026). Carrying the average $17,700 receivable on that for one month costs about $327 in interest. This is not hypothetical substitution: QuickBooks found 38 percent of firms with overdue invoices grew more reliant on credit cards, against 21 percent of firms without them (Intuit QuickBooks, July 2026).

The discount side is arithmetic too. Xero's guide works the example: on a $5,000 invoice at 2/10 net 30, offering 2 percent off to pull payment 20 days forward costs $100, and a 1.5 percent monthly late fee charged instead earns $75 a month (Xero, 19 August 2026). Whether that trade is worth making depends on what the cash is needed for.

The number you will see quoted, and should handle carefully: "late payments cost the average small business nearly $40,000 a year." It traces to a 2025 survey of about 500 owners by a single invoice-finance firm, Gateway Commercial Finance, recirculated through a Stacker syndication in August 2026 (via ABC17 News, 14 August 2026). It is directional, self-selected, and not independently confirmed. The defensible version is narrower: a delay costs you the financing to cover it, the discounts you give to end it, and the orders you do not place while the money is out. The first two you can calculate today from your own aged receivables and your own borrowing rate.

Second-order, and easy to miss: QuickBooks found 42 percent of small businesses delayed paying their own vendors and contractors because they were themselves waiting on money. The cost of a delay does not stop at the business that absorbs it first.

What can an operator do about the lag without hiring a bigger sales team?

Shorten the gap you control. Bill the day the work is done, not at month-end. Ask for a deposit or milestone payments on anything large. Offer an early-pay discount only when the cash timing is worth more than the discount costs. And do not pass the delay down your own supplier chain.

Invoice speed is the cheapest lever and the one entirely in your hands. The lag Xero measures starts at the invoice date, so a bill sent two weeks after delivery is two weeks of waiting you added yourself.

On terms, the Hackett data shows the pressure running toward longer terms because buyers hold the leverage (The Hackett Group, 18 August 2025). On the sell side the counter is structure rather than hope: deposits, progress payments, and net 14 instead of net 30 where the relationship allows it. Early-pay discounts such as 2/10 net 30 are expensive money on an annualised basis, so reach for them on a specific bill when the timing genuinely matters, not as a standing policy.

Bridging the gap with borrowing is neither free nor certain. The Federal Reserve's 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, released 3 March 2026, found about a third of firms that applied for financing still faced a funding gap, and among those who borrowed from online lenders, 60 percent found the cost higher than expected (Federal Reserve Banks, 2025 Small Business Credit Survey key findings, 3 March 2026). That is the argument for fixing the timing before it becomes a financing problem.

What to watch next

show whether the 2026 reversal in payment times kept going or settled.

carrying an overdue invoice keeps climbing or has peaked.

convert a sale into cash stretching toward 83 days (Allianz Trade, 2026 Global Survey); watch its next payment-practices update to see whether that lands or is walked back.

issue. When it lands it will confirm or break the two-year run of worsening DSO at large US companies.

cycles again by late 2026. The buyer-side surveys through 2025 do not show that yet. The next year of data is the test.

Questions, or a correction: marketingz@campaigncrush.org or (438) 813-2465.