Payment practices reporting
The legal duty on large UK companies and LLPs to publish, every six months, how and how quickly they pay their suppliers.
Payment practices reporting is the requirement, set by the Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance Regulations 2017, for large companies and LLPs to publish their payment terms and performance on a government website twice a year. Reports cover standard and maximum payment terms, the average time taken to pay, and the proportion of invoices paid within 30 days, between 31 and 60 days, and later than 60 days.
The aim is transparency: making it possible for suppliers, investors and the public to see which large businesses pay promptly and which do not. In practice the data is published at company level, averaged across all suppliers, and reported months after the period it covers.
That makes it a useful public signal but a blunt one. It shows how a company pays in aggregate, not how it pays a particular supplier or sector. Payment behaviour benchmarking built on real-time data at the relationship level gives a sharper and more current picture than a six-monthly return.
Applies to companies and LLPs exceeding two of three thresholds on consecutive balance sheet dates: £54 million turnover, £27 million balance sheet total and 250 employees (raised from April 2025). For financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2026, large companies must also include payment practices disclosures in their directors' report. The Commercial Payments Bill proposes further strengthening of reporting and enforcement.