In March 2026 the Government confirmed the toughest late-payment framework in 25 years: a hard 60-day cap on B2B payment terms, mandatory statutory interest, and new powers for the Small Business Commissioner to investigate and fine persistent late payers. Good news. The catch is in the timing — the cap isn't expected to take effect until 2027.
Meanwhile, late payments have already disrupted salary payments at 42% of SMEs over the past year, and 41% have dipped into emergency funds to cope. You can't run payroll on a law that arrives next year.
Don't wait for Westminster to fix your cashflow
The honest position: real help is coming, but slowly, and it won't be shaped around your business. A get-paid system is something you can own now — and it keeps working long after the law changes, whatever the final rules turn out to be.
By a get-paid system I don't mean "send invoices faster." I mean an owned process that runs the same way every time, without you holding it together:
- Clear terms, set out up front, identical on every job.
- Invoices that go out the moment the work is done — not when you find a spare evening.
- Automated reminders before and after the due date, so chasing isn't a confrontation you have to psych yourself up for.
- A tracked chase — you see at a glance who owes what and how late, instead of it living in your head.
A business that gets paid on time isn't lucky with its clients. It has a system its clients can feel.
The deadline that's quietly building you an asset
There's a second deadline working in your favour. From April 2026, Making Tax Digital pulled around 864,000 sole traders and landlords into keeping digital, quarterly financial records. For a lot of owners that lands as a chore.
Reframe it. Clean, current, digital numbers are the first brick of an owned data asset — legible to you, to a lender, and one day to a buyer. The deadline is forcing owners to build something they should have built anyway. Pair it with a get-paid system and you've turned two pieces of admin into one asset that makes the business steadier and worth more.
How we'd build it with you
This is a fast build, not a six-month project. It often starts as one of our Template Apps — a proven get-paid flow configured to your business and live in days — or as part of a Bespoke Build if your invoicing is tangled up with how you quote and deliver. Either way, it's built properly, set up in your name, and handed to you to own. No lock-in.
You don't have to wait until 2027 to stop being your own debt collector.
Start with the free audit
Not sure whether cashflow is your weakest asset or just the loudest one this week? The free audit scores it against everything else in the business and tells you where building first will pay back fastest.