UK SMEs are owed more than £586 billion in outstanding invoices according to recent figures from Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking.
The average small business is owed more than £108,000 in unpaid invoices, an increase of 8% since January 2016, with almost a third of firms citing late payments as the biggest cause of cash flow problems.
The Business in Britain report, which gathers the views of more than 1,500 UK companies, found that more than 1.5million SMEs are currently owed over £200,000 in outstanding invoices, up from 1.3 million since the start of the year.
Lloyds expects the issue of late payments to persist into 2017, with nearly a third of businesses surveyed expecting more customers to require deferred payment terms in the next six months.