How Long Australia's Big Businesses Take to Pay Small Suppliers (2026 Data)

If you do work for a big company, you've probably wondered how long they really take to pay. You don't have to guess. Australia's large businesses have to report, every six months, how quickly they pay their small business suppliers, and the government publishes every report on the Payment Times Reports Register.

I downloaded the latest register file and looked at the most recent full half-year: July to December 2025, covering 2,673 reports. Here's what it shows, industry by industry, with a closer look at construction.

The short answer

Most large businesses set payment terms of 30 days or less, and the typical one paid its average small-supplier invoice in 25 days. That sounds fine. The average hides the slow end, though, and the slow end is where small businesses get hurt.

The register also reports how long each business took to pay 95% of its small-supplier invoices. For the typical large business, that was 55 days. One in three (34%) took more than 60 days. Those are the days by which 95% were paid: the slowest one invoice in twenty waited longer still.

By industry

"Typical" here means the median business in each industry: half did better, half did worse. "Reports" is the number of large businesses in the industry that reported for July–December 2025.

Industry	Reports	Days to pay 95% of invoices (typical)	Took more than 60 days to pay 95%	Invoices paid within 30 days (typical)
Manufacturing	350	61.5	53%	57%
Construction	283	59	43%	55%
Wholesale trade	339	59	45%	66%
Education and training	17	59	35%	87%
Retail trade	210	56	34%	66%
Transport, postal and warehousing	147	56	32%	73%
Health care and social assistance	106	55.5	42%	82%
Professional, scientific and technical services	186	54.5	38%	80%
Other services	25	54	24%	79%
Mining	182	52	32%	74%
Rental, hiring and real estate services	68	50.5	35%	83%
Agriculture, forestry and fishing	104	50	18%	76%
Information media and telecommunications	63	48	29%	81%
Accommodation and food services	38	47	16%	86%
Administrative and support services	51	45	25%	83%
Electricity, gas, water and waste services	92	43.5	16%	89%
Public administration and safety	33	43	15%	89%
Arts and recreation services	34	38	12%	89%
Financial and insurance services	345	33	12%	93%

Two things stand out. First, manufacturing, construction and wholesale trade sit at the slow end. Second, the two measures don't always agree. Education and training pays most invoices quickly but has a slow tail. Treat industries with only a few dozen reports as a rough guide.

Construction, up close

Across all industries, the typical large business paid 75% of its small-supplier invoices within 30 days. Construction was the lowest of any industry: only manufacturing comes close. The register splits construction into three parts, and they are much alike:

Construction subdivision	Reports	Days to pay 95% (typical)	Took more than 60 days to pay 95%	Paid within 30 days (typical)
Building construction	113	58	41%	59%
Construction services	96	58.5	45%	54%
Heavy and civil engineering construction	74	59	45%	52%

There is a little good news. A year earlier, for July–December 2024, the typical large construction business paid only 51% of small-business invoices within 30 days, and nearly half (47%) took more than 60 days to pay 95% of them. Both measures improved in the latest half. It's one half-year, so I wouldn't call it a trend yet.

What to do with this if you supply a big business

• Look up the customer, not the industry. These are typical figures, and businesses in the same industry vary a lot. Search the register by name or ABN and read three numbers: their payment terms, the share of invoices paid within 30 days, and the days taken to pay 95%. The last one is the day by which 95% of their invoices were paid; the slowest 5% took longer than that.
• Plan your cash around the slow end. If a customer took 70 days to pay 95% of its invoices, assume some of yours will take at least that long, whatever the terms say. Price the job and plan your wages and supplier bills with that in mind.
• Get their invoicing rules in writing before you start. Order numbers, the supplier portal, who approves the invoice. An invoice rejected for a missing order number sits unpaid while you fix it.
• Follow up on a schedule. Big companies pay what's in front of them. A calm, regular follow-up keeps your invoice there. Here's the schedule and the exact words I'd use.
• In construction, know your security of payment rights. Each state has its own law and its own deadlines. My follow-up guide covers where to start.

The regulator also publishes a Fast Small Business Payer List on the register. If you get to choose between customers, it's worth a look.

A note on the numbers

• Source. The Payment Times Reports Register file dated 30 September 2026, © Commonwealth of Australia, used under CC BY 4.0. The reporting businesses are "mostly large businesses and some government enterprises", in the scheme's own words.
• Which reports. Only reports covering exactly 1 July to 31 December 2025, so every figure covers the same months. Businesses with a different financial year report other six-month periods and are left out. Reports for January–June 2026 were still arriving (706 by 30 September), so I haven't used them.
• Revised reports. Businesses can revise a report, and the register keeps every version. I count each business once per period, using its latest version.
• Why typical, not average. In its January 2026 update, the Payment Times Reporting Regulator reported that the average time large businesses take to pay 95% of small-business invoices rose to 64 days for January–June 2025, up from 58. That fits the reports as first lodged: counting only the versions submitted by the end of 2025, I get 63. Since then, businesses have corrected some of those reports. Sixteen January–June 2025 reports gave a 95% figure of more than a year, and twelve of those businesses have since revised it, to between 31 and 123 days. On the current register, that average is 58 days for both half-years. A handful of bad entries can move an average by days. They can't move the typical business, which is why the figures in this post use it.

Where Unpaid fits

The register tells you how a customer pays everyone. What gets your invoice paid is following it up, on time, every time. That's what I built Unpaid to do: it connects to Xero, drafts each follow-up for each overdue invoice, and waits for you to approve every email before it sends. There's a 14-day free trial, and the schedule works just as well by hand.