The Small Business Money Report — LIZCO

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The Small Business Money Report

Five things quietly costing small businesses money — and what the research actually shows.

Eight sources · Every figure cited · September 2026

Why this exists

The trail kept ending at a blog post quoting another blog post.

So I read the actual reports. Eight of them. Three things you should know before you trust any of this:

Most late-payment research comes from one accounting software company. Real data, disclosed methods, one point of view.
The Census figures aren't a survey at all. They come from tax records — the sturdiest numbers here, and the least current.
Almost nobody breaks out businesses under ten people. Where I lean on a proxy, I say so on the page.

Every number below has a source at the end of this report, with the sample size and the date it was collected. I'd rather you check them than take my word for it.— Liz

Who this is about

Most American businesses have no employees at all.

29.8 million with no paid employees · 8.3 million with employees

2022 reference year, US Census Bureau ⁵

This matters for everything that follows. When one of these surveys says "small business," it usually means anything up to 100 employees, sometimes 250, sometimes 499. So the averages you're about to read include companies that have a bookkeeper, a controller and a line of credit. If your business is you and a couple of contractors, your own experience is probably worse than the number suggests.

Problem 01

Work you already did, 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%

0%50%100%

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.

The $17.7K average isn't much use to you, because it blends a one-person shop together with a 90-person firm. The number worth watching is the change. 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%

0%50%100%

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%

0%50%100%

Coral marks Intuit QuickBooks ² (1,305 owners); blue marks Patriot Software ⁷ (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%

0%50%100%

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%

0%25%50%

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%

0%50%100%

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%

0%50%100%

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.

Put together

Every headline figure in this report lands between 39% and 59%.

Eight numbers, five problems, four different research organizations — and they all land in roughly the same range. These were different questions put to different groups of people, so I wouldn't read too much into the clustering on its own. What it does rule out is the idea that any of this is a rare problem happening to a few unlucky businesses.

39% 59%

0%50%100%

Plotted: 39% broken by any late payment ^1,2 · 47.7% and 54% who cut their own pay ^2,7 · 49% short from processing delays ¹ · 50% and 53.5% losing sleep ^2,7 · 59% carrying overdue invoices and 59% paying for instant transfer ¹. Different questions asked of different samples — so read this as calibration, not as a statistic in its own right.

If something is happening to roughly half of all small businesses, it probably isn't a sign that you're running yours badly. It's closer to a description of the conditions everyone is working in at the moment — which is useful to know before you decide what to change about how you work.

How to read a statistic

What to check when you see these numbers somewhere else

You'll meet these figures again — in a newsletter, on a sales page, in somebody's post. Here's what I'd check before believing any of them, mine included.

Check whether anyone counted businesses your size. Almost nobody does. The QuickBooks reports publish no breakdown by number of employees ^1,3, and the Federal Reserve survey leaves out businesses with no employees altogether ⁴. When you see a figure about "small business," assume it describes a company quite a bit bigger than yours.
Treat any "hours lost to admin" number as unproven. It gets quoted constantly. Every version I chased led back to one vendor's guide citing another vendor's guide, never to a survey with a published sample — which is why there's no section about it in this report. If someone quotes you one, ask them where it came from.
Watch for "causes" doing a job that "happens alongside" should be doing. These surveys record what occurs together — late payment and credit card use, late payment and price rises. None of them show that one produces the other, and that includes the comparisons I drew in the charts above.
Look at who was actually asked. Small Business Majority's figures come from 247 owners inside that organization's own membership ⁸. That tells you something real about its members, and it isn't a national statistic, though it often gets repeated as one.
Notice who paid for the research. Intuit QuickBooks produces the most detailed late-payment data anyone publishes, and also sells software for managing late payments ^1,2,3. Their methods are disclosed, which is more than most sources manage. But one company's picture of a problem is still one company's picture.

Sources and methodology

Every superscript above points here.

All sources 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
US Census Bureau — Nonemployer Statistics and County Business Patterns Administrative data from tax records and business filings, not surveys — no sampling error. Both counts are 2022. The nonemployer figure comes from the Nonemployer Statistics release of May 8, 2025; the 8.3 million employer businesses come from 2022 County Business Patterns, reported in the Census feature on the nation's smallest businesses. Two programs, two pages. census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/nonemployer-business-characteristics.html
census.gov/library/stories/2025/05/smallest-businesses.html
US Census Bureau — Nonemployer growth analysis Census analysis of the nonemployer series, 2012–2023. Published July 2025. census.gov/library/stories/2025/07/nonemployer-business-growth.html
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/
Small Business Majority — Voice of Main Street, fifth edition 247 small business owners in the organization's own network — a self-selected membership, not a probability sample. Fielded January 23 – March 5, 2026. ±6% at 95% confidence. Cited here only as an example of a figure that shouldn't be quoted as a national number. smallbusinessmajority.org — Voice of Main Street

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