Commercial Payments Bill: Why the 60-Day Cap Makes Credit Control Outsourcing More Important, Not Less 

A late payment never looks like a crisis on the day it happens, does it? The invoice went out on time, the terms were agreed upon, and the customer is good for the money. First, it slips a week. Then a fortnight. The forecast absorbs it. Nothing on the ledger looks wrong, right up until the end of the quarter, when it actually does.  

The Commercial Payments Bill sets out to deal with exactly this. A 60-day ceiling on payment terms, interest that can no longer be waived, and a regulator with the power to fine. The relief on the supplier side is real. But was the problem ever a lack of rights? 

Late payment is a question of who is chasing, how consistently, and whether there is a record to show for it. This is the ground credit control has always occupied, and the Bill does not change it. 

This piece looks at what the Bill would change, when it is likely to bite, and why the operating model behind your collections matters more once the rules tighten, not less.

A Closer Look at the New Commercial Payments Bill 

The Commercial Payments Bill was introduced in the House of Lords in May 2026 as the Small Business Protections Bill and is still in passage, so nothing is yet in force. It is aimed squarely at large businesses paying their small and medium-sized suppliers rather than at all B2B trade. Here are the measures that matter:  

• It would cap payment terms at 60 days, and at 30 where the buyer is a public authority, with a 30-day term implied wherever a contract is silent or specifies a term the Bill voids. Exemptions apply where both parties are large undertakings, or where the purchaser is the smaller party, and the Bill leaves terms such as “large undertaking” to be defined in secondary legislation.  

• Statutory interest is set at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, and any clause excluding or varying that right is void.  

• Suppliers would gain the right to a fixed sum where a purchaser raises a dispute late, or without sufficient information. The detail of what counts as late, and what information is sufficient, is still moving as the Bill progresses. 

• The Small Business Commissioner gains powers to investigate, adjudicate and fine.  

On timing, no commencement date has been set. The government has said it will consult further on implementation and provide a lead-in and transition period, and the measures will not apply retrospectively. Commencement is not expected before 2027, which is the point worth holding on to: there is time to prepare, and the preparation is operational rather than legal.  

Notice that each measure acts on the terms of the debt. There is nothing that talks about the behaviour of the debtor. 

The Bill strengthens the supplier’s position in an argument but it neither reduces the number of arguments nor shortens the queue. This raises the more useful question of what that stronger position is actually worth to a cash position. 

Why the 60-Day Payment Cap Does Not Help Your Cash Position?   

A capped term sets the date an invoice becomes overdue. It does nothing about the days that follow, and those are the days where working capital is lost. 

Consider what a right to interest actually is on a balance sheet. It is an asset that exists only if somebody enforces it, and most suppliers have historically chosen not to. Interest recognised and never collected is a provision waiting to be written back, not cash. Nothing in the Bill reaches the invoice sitting unpaid on day 61 for reasons nobody has yet logged. 

What the cap does change is what finance should be measuring. Gross DSO has always been a blunt instrument, because it mixes generous terms with poor collection and reports them as one number. Once terms are capped by statute, the honest measure becomes the overrun beyond the agreed date, since that is the only part of the cycle the business still controls. 

RELATED BLOG: Find out why credit control is the quiet lever behind healthier cash flow. 

Stronger Rights Will Only Make Credit Control Harder, Here’s Why 

Each measure in the Bill creates work that did not previously exist. Four pressures in particular land on a function most businesses have never had to formalise. 

1. A commercial decision with no owner. While interest could be waived in the contract, there was nothing to decide. Once it cannot be waived, somebody has to choose whether to invoke it against a customer the sales director has spent three years cultivating. By default that choice lands on whoever happens to be doing the chasing, which is the wrong place for a judgement of that weight. 

2. A dispute clock you have to be watching to use. The fixed sum protects a supplier only if that supplier knows precisely when each invoice falls due, can see a dispute arriving late or incomplete, and can evidence what passed between the parties. A team working from a monthly aged debtor report can do none of those things. 

3. An evidential bar that informal processes cannot clear. Claiming interest, or complaining to the Commissioner, means producing a clean record of what was agreed, when the invoice went out, when it was chased and what was said. A relationship-led process cannot produce that, because the relationship is held in somebody’s head rather than in the ledger. 

4. Buyers who adapt rather than reform. Closing off the easy route tends to increase traffic on the harder ones. A dispute raised carefully inside the window is the obvious candidate, and it costs the buyer nothing to try. 

Each of these pressures lands on the same function, so it is worth setting out plainly what that function now has to be able to do. 

5 Things the New Regime Will Demand of a Credit Control Function  

The new regime rewards documentation over goodwill. Five capabilities decide whether a business can use its stronger position. 

1. A Register of Agreed Terms That is Accurate at Customer Level  

You cannot enforce a ceiling you have not recorded. Most ledgers hold payment terms as a system default rather than a negotiated fact, and the two drift apart across years of renewals and side agreements. Somebody has to reconcile what the contract says against what the ledger believes.  

2. Due-Date Tracking Precise Enough to See a Dispute Coming  

Knowing the due date on every open invoice is an operational capability, not a legal one. It has to be visible continuously, or a late or ill-founded dispute will look no different from a legitimate one. Monthly reporting cycles are far too coarse, and by the time an aged debtor report surfaces the problem the moment to act on it has usually passed. 

3. A Contact Trail That Stands Up as Evidence  

Every chase logged, dated and attributable to a person. A claim for interest is only as strong as the record behind it, and the same is true of a complaint to the Commissioner. Notes sitting in an inbox are not a record. If the process cannot produce a chronology on demand, the new rights are decorative.  

4. A Written Policy on When Interest is Claimed  

This is a commercial decision, so it belongs with the people who own the customer relationship rather than with whoever is making the call that week. Set the threshold in advance: which accounts, at what age, with what escalation. A policy decided once is far easier to apply consistently than a judgement improvised a dozen times a year.  

5. A Chase Cadence That Survives Annual Leave  

Consistency is what stops a reliable payer drifting into a slow one. Customers calibrate to the supplier who contacts them, and a rhythm that lapses for a fortnight teaches them something you would rather they did not learn. In a team of two, cadence is the first thing to break and the last thing anybody notices.  

Now, sustaining all five, month after month, is where the operating model becomes the real question.  

RELATED BLOG: Discover the seven signs you are working with a top UK credit control provider. 

In-House, Hybrid or Outsourced: Choosing the Right Credit Control Model 

Every one of the five requirements is a continuity problem, which is why the operating model matters as much as the intent behind it. 

In-house still works on a small, stable ledger where the controller knows every account and the chase happens because one person remembers to make it happen. This holds until the ledger grows or that person leaves. Hybrid looks like the sensible middle and introduces a seam, because the invoices that cause trouble are precisely the ones that do not sit neatly on either side of it.  

Here’s a quick decision-matrix for CFOs to help decide the right fit: 

The relationship point is the one the table cannot carry. A third party chasing in your name has nothing to protect, which matters more now that interest can no longer be waived as a quiet gesture of goodwill.  

What Makes UK Businesses Trust QX Global Group?

QX runs credit control outsourcing as a centre of excellence rather than a team of chasers working on your instructions.  

A centre of excellence designs the process once and applies it identically, to every account, every week. Chaser templates are standardised rather than composed under pressure. Escalation follows a matrix agreed with you in advance, so the interest decision is executed to policy rather than improvised by whoever happens to be making the call. Payment posting and remittance handling are automated, so cash application never queues behind a manual step.  

Standardisation is what makes the record defensible, because a process that runs the same way every time produces evidence as a by-product rather than an afterthought. Here’s what QX delivered for a UK recruitment group: 

Next Steps  

The 60-day cap, mandatory interest and the Commissioner’s new powers will give UK suppliers a materially stronger position. What none of them supply, though, is the operational discipline required to use it. 

Outsourcing that work is not the same as outsourcing the customer relationship. The judgement stays in-house. What changes is that the routine happens whether or not anyone has time for it.  

When the Bill takes effect, the businesses that benefit will not be the ones with the strongest legal claim. They will be the ones already running a function capable of enforcing it. 

Ready to close the gap between what you are owed and what you have banked? Speak to QX Global Group about outsourced credit control for your business.