Transportation payment is deteriorating

Pieter Kinds

May 11, 2016 - 19:52

Invoice payment in the transportation sector

Almost all entrepreneurs and businesses are improving their payment cycles, except for the transportation sector, where payment behavior is deteriorating.

This according to a study conducted by Graydon, a Dutch financial services company investigating payments in all business sectors.

The Graydon's research runs from 2002. The great news is that since then, the overall payment of invoices has never been so fast fulfilled as in the past quarter. On Average, a single bill is paid in less than 41 days. That's almost three days faster than the same period last year.

From fast to slow pay

In nearly all sectors, the bills are paid faster. But not in the transportation sector, where the invoices now remain three years in a row longer pending. Remarkably, transportation companies were still one of the fastest payers in the first quarter of 2012.

Reason for slow payments in transportation

According to Graydon, payments in the transportation sector remain longer pending on the finance desk because of the margins that are under pressure. "We also see that in the last quarter, the number of starting companies in comparison with a year earlier has doubled," says Hans-Peter Vloeimans, Group Director Marketing Information at Graydon, in the report. "That obviously creates increasing competition and with the low margins taken into account, this leads continuously to worse and worse payment behavior."