What exactly is required?
Separate legal or contractual obligations, buyer preference, user need and internal aspiration.
Gap 13 of 14
Payment behaviour → market health
Supplier reliability is assessed without considering buyer payment behaviour
The problem
Late payment, disputed invoices, unclear acceptance and long approval chains consume supplier capacity and can push smaller firms out of the market.
Cash-flow and administrative burden affect competition, resilience and the supplier's ability to invest in quality.
Buyer question
What in our ordering, acceptance and invoice process causes avoidable delay?
Supplier question
Are payment risk, evidence of acceptance and escalation designed into the commercial model?
Observable evidence
What would make confidence more reasonable?
- payment terms
- invoice acceptance path
- delay causes
- dispute log
- improvement action
Important: the presence of a document does not prove that the process operates. Evidence should be proportionate, current, attributable and capable of being reviewed.
A practical diagnostic
Six questions before prescribing a solution.
The questions prevent a generic template from being mistaken for implementation.
Who is accountable?
Name the person who performs, approves and reviews the activity—not only the department.
What actually happens?
Describe the normal sequence, decision points, exceptions, handovers and dependencies.
What trace is created?
Identify a proportionate record that can show the process was used and the result was reviewed.
How is variation corrected?
Define how delay, error, nonconformity or poor feedback becomes corrective action rather than explanation.
What decision follows?
Specify what management changes when the evidence shows the process is not producing the required outcome.
Continue the diagnosis
Related gaps
Most reliability problems cross more than one point in the system.
Sources and scrutiny
Sources informing this gap
These sources support the factual context. Market Accord's interpretation is identified separately and should be read with its stated limitations.
- Large businesses' payment practices and performance statistics 2025 Department for Business and Trade · 2026-07-14 · official statistics Open source
- Late Payments Research Office of the Small Business Commissioner · 2025-07-31 · commissioned research summary Open source
- Prompt payment policy Cabinet Office · 2025-02-24 · official guidance Open source
- The Fair Payment Code Office of the Small Business Commissioner · 2025-02-21 · official programme information Open source
Move from diagnosis to evidence.
A short scoping conversation can determine whether the next step is research, implementation, a controlled pilot, buyer engagement or no intervention at all.