Average time for bill payment is 44 days

Law firms chasing payment from reluctant clients will find it interesting that the average bill payment time for New Zealand businesses in the December 2011 quarter was 44.6 days.

The latest Trade Payments Analysis from Dun & Bradstreet shows that publicly-listed companies took nearly a week longer to pay their bills than private firms. Publicly-listed companies averaged payment terms of 51 days in the period. This was 2.2 days longer than the previous quarter and 5.8 days longer than the same quarter in 2010.

Given that the standard payment period is 30 days, this is an interesting trend.

The latest analysis shows that the forestry sector was the fastest to pay, with payment terms at 39.4 days. The slowest paying group was the electric, gas and sanitary services sector at 52.8 days.

Large firms of 500 or more employees were the slowest paying group, with repayment times of 48.8 days while businesses with 6-19 employees were fastest to pay, averaging 42.7 days.

Firms based in Auckland took the longest to pay, at 46.3 days, while Christchurch was the fastest-paying city, with firms taking an average of 45 days.