LIZCO Research
The Small Business Money Report
Five things quietly costing small businesses money — and where to start fixing each one.
Problem 01
Work you already did is sitting unpaid
59%1
of small businesses are carrying invoices 30 days past due.
Intuit QuickBooks, 2026 Late Payments Report
- Last year 47%
- This year 59%
Share of businesses carrying invoices 30+ days overdue, year over year — a 12-point move in twelve months 1
22%1
have at least a fifth of all invoices past the 30-day mark.
$17.7K1
average waiting to come in — across businesses of every size.
Last year, 47% of businesses were carrying invoices a month past due. This year it's 59%. Getting paid late is becoming ordinary rather than exceptional, and if you don't have a credit line or someone whose job is chasing invoices, you feel that shift before anyone else does.
Problem 02
One late invoice is enough to break the month
You'd expect a smaller invoice to cause a smaller problem, and it does — just not by as much as you'd think.
- Any late paymentmade payroll or bills hard 39%
- Under $5,000was enough 27%
- Under $1,000was enough 12%
Share of owners reporting each. Intuit QuickBooks 1,2 — the report measures these separately, so they are three readings of the same pressure, not slices of one total.
That bottom number is the one I keep coming back to. Twelve percent of owners said a single invoice under a thousand dollars made it hard to cover payroll or bills. Not a client leaving, not a project falling through — one ordinary invoice showing up late. When your buffer is thin, the timing of the money matters far more than the size of it.
Problem 03
The owner's pay is the shock absorber
Two different companies ran two different surveys, using different panels and different methods, and asked roughly the same questions. On both of them the answers came out within a few points of each other — and that agreement is what makes this section worth trusting.
- Cut their own payat least once Half 47.7% 54%
- Lost sleepover the business 50% 53.5%
Coral marks Intuit QuickBooks 2 (1,305 owners); blue marks Patriot Software 5 (1,000 respondents). Different instruments, 3.5 and 6.3 points apart.
I don't think many owners sit down and decide to stop paying themselves. What usually happens is you cover one gap because it's faster than the alternative, and it works, so you do it again the next time things get tight. After a while it stops being an emergency measure and turns into how the business runs.
Problem 04
Your costs went up before your prices did
Among firms facing higher costs on imported goods and materials, these two numbers add up to more than 100% — which tells you most of them did both. They raised prices where they could, and absorbed whatever they couldn't pass on.
- Passed some onto customers 76%
- Absorbed somethemselves 60%
Federal Reserve Banks, 2026 Report on Employer Firms 4. Both figures say "at least some," so a firm can appear in both — that is why the total exceeds 100%.
And the ones getting paid late end up raising prices further
- Hit hardestby overdue invoices 16%
- Everyone else 10%
Average size of a recent price increase — a 1.6× gap. Intuit QuickBooks, 2025 Late Payments Report 3.
The report doesn't tell us which of these came first, so I can't say that getting paid late causes bigger price increases. But the pattern is worth noticing: the businesses under the most cash pressure seem to put off raising prices, and then have to raise them further when they finally do. A 10% increase is something you can explain in a short email. A 16% increase usually means a phone call and a nervous few weeks waiting to see who stays.
Problem 05
Paying to get your own money faster
Once a customer finally pays you, there's a second wait while the money clears the banking system. Nearly half of owners say that second wait opens a real gap in their cash flow — and more than half have paid an extra fee to shorten it.
- Say the normal wait for a payment to clear creates a moderate or critical gap in their cash flow — this is after the customer has already paid. 49%
- Paid an extra fee at least once during 2025 — instant transfer, fast deposit — to have the money land in their account sooner. 59%
- Pay that fee as a matter of routine, rather than only when money is tight. 15%
Intuit QuickBooks, 2026 Late Payments Report 1. Three separate questions in the same survey, each answered by all respondents — so the 15% is 15% of everyone, not 15% of the 59%. The report doesn't say whether the same businesses answered yes to more than one.
And the same pressure runs in the other direction
The survey also asked owners whether they had been the one paying late. Both answers landed in the same range.
- Delayed paying someone they owed because of pressures outside the business. 42%
- Delayed paying contractors, suppliers or vendors because of problems inside the business. 39%
Intuit QuickBooks, 2026 Late Payments Report 1. The report doesn't spell out what counts as an outside pressure or an internal problem, so read these as two broad buckets rather than specific causes.
74%1
still handle bill payments at least partly by hand, rather than on an automated schedule — which is its own small source of delay, at both ends.
This is the easiest of the five to miss, because an instant-transfer fee never appears as a line item you can go look at. It comes off the top of each deposit, so the money is just quietly a little less than you expected, every single time. It's worth adding up what you paid in fees last year before you decide it isn't worth dealing with. The second chart is worth a moment too: roughly as many owners pointed to something outside the business as pointed to something inside it, which suggests a good share of late payment is simply delay being handed down the line.
What it all means
You're not the only one — this is happening to about half of all small businesses
If something is happening to roughly half of all small businesses, it isn't a sign that you're running yours badly. Every headline figure in this report lands between 39% and 59% — eight numbers, five separate problems, four different research organizations, all clustering in the same place.
Getting paid late. Covering the gap out of your own pay. Absorbing costs you couldn't pass on. These are the ordinary conditions of running a small business right now, not a run of bad luck that happened to land on you.
Plotted: 39% broken by any late payment 1,2 · 47.7% and 54% who cut their own pay 2,5 · 49% short from processing delays 1 · 50% and 53.5% losing sleep 2,5 · 59% carrying overdue invoices and 59% paying for instant transfer 1. These are different questions put to different groups, so the clustering is context rather than a statistic of its own.
Which matters practically, because almost none of it gets fixed by working harder or being better at your job. It gets fixed by changing what you ask for and when you ask for it — and that part is more straightforward than it sounds. The next section is four places to start.
Where to start
Four things you can do about this
None of this requires a new system or a bookkeeper. The first two cost you an afternoon and nothing else.
-
Find out what you're actually owed
Open your invoicing and add up everything past its due date. Then add up everything past thirty days. Most owners are surprised by the second number, because overdue invoices don't announce themselves — they just quietly stop being income. You can't fix a gap you haven't measured.
-
Ask for the money
Invoices sit unpaid far more often because the reminder never got written than because a client refused to pay. Writing that email from scratch each time is what makes it not happen, so it helps to have the words ready before you need them — including the follow-up for when the first one goes quiet.
-
Check whether your prices moved when your costs did
If your rates have held steady while your suppliers, software and insurance all went up, the difference has been coming out of your own pay. Work out what you'd need to charge to get back to level, then decide what to do about it. The number is usually smaller than the conversation feels.
-
Add up what you paid to reach your own money
Go through last year for instant-transfer and fast-deposit fees. If the total is more than a rounding error, shortening your payment terms costs less than paying to skip the wait does.
Worth saying plainly: none of this gets easier by handing the chasing to somebody else. The kits make those conversations faster, and you'll still be the one having them. The work I do with clients sits further upstream — marketing strategy, content and communications for family-owned and founder-led businesses — because a late invoice hurts most when there isn't enough work coming in behind it, and that's a demand problem rather than a billing one. See how we work together →
Sources and methodology
Where every number came from
Five sources, all accessed and verified September 2026.
- Intuit QuickBooks — 2026 Small Business Late Payments Report Publisher report drawing on the Small Business Insights quarterly survey (~5,000 respondents per quarter) and the December 2025 owner survey below. No breakdowns by business size. quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/small-business-late-payments-report-2026/
- Intuit QuickBooks — Business Ownership in 2026 Online survey of 1,305 US business owners, sole owner / co-owner / co-founder of a business with 0–250 employees. Fielded December 2025 via Prodege. Weighted to Census demographics. ±2.7 points at 95% confidence. quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/business-ownership-in-2026/
- Intuit QuickBooks — 2025 Small Business Late Payments Report 2,487 US small businesses with 0–100 employees, from the Small Business Insights panel (Dynata plus QuickBooks Online subscribers). Fielded January 2025. quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/small-business-late-payments-report-2025/
- Federal Reserve Banks — 2026 Report on Employer Firms Small Business Credit Survey, fielded by 12 Federal Reserve Banks, September 3 – November 14, 2025. 6,525 responses from employer firms with 1–499 employees. Businesses with no employees are outside the sample. fedsmallbusiness.org/reports/survey/2026/2026-report-on-employer-firms
- Patriot Software — Small Business Owner Burnout Survey Vendor survey of 1,000 US adults via Pollfish. Respondents are current owners, managers, or recent former owners. No business-size criteria and no field dates published — treat as corroboration, not a headline. patriotsoftware.com/blog/accounting/small-business-owner-burnout-survey/
Every figure here is quoted from the source numbered beside it. Nothing is estimated, projected, or inferred. Every chart plots those figures and nothing else — where two numbers are compared, the caption says whether the source established a relationship between them. Where I couldn't verify a claim, I left it out, and said so.
LIZCO is a marketing and communications consultancy for family-owned and founder-led businesses. lizco.net