Time Spent Chasing Payments: 14 Hours a Week [2026]

Sixty-five percent of mid-sized US businesses spend an average of 14 hours a week on payment-collection admin, according to a Wakefield Research survey of 2,000 US businesses conducted for QuickBooks in 2021. That is nearly two full working days lost every week to chasing money that is already owed, and newer data from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the freelance economy shows the burden has not gone away in the years since.

How many hours a week do businesses spend chasing payments?

The most detailed figure on record comes from a Wakefield Research survey of 2,000 US businesses with 25 to 200 employees, fielded in November 2021 and commissioned by QuickBooks. 65% of respondents said they spent an average of 14 hours a week completing administrative tasks tied to collecting payments, close to two full working days that could otherwise go toward selling or servicing customers. The same survey found these businesses were owed an average of $304,066 in late payments at the time, and 76% said they had to resolve overdue invoices before they could focus on growth at all.

That figure is now several years old, and no comparably detailed US survey has repeated the exact question since. It remains the most cited number in the space because the methodology, a large, named sample with a clear question about weekly hours, is unusually specific: most other sources report either total dollars owed or days-late averages, not hours spent on the collection process itself, the kind of overall lateness picture covered in more depth in Late Payment Statistics 2026.

This is really a specific slice of a broader admin-time problem: invoicing itself is only one line item in the hours a small business owner spends on paperwork every week, alongside bookkeeping, payroll, and tax prep, and it is the collections side specifically, not general admin, that tends to carry the largest single time cost.

Figure 1: 65% of mid-sized US businesses reported spending an average of 14 hours a week on payment-collection admin. Source: Wakefield Research for QuickBooks, 2,000 US businesses with 25-200 employees, November 2021.

How does the time burden compare across the US, EU, and Australia/NZ?

It varies by region, and the US figure sits at the high end of what has been measured. The European Commission’s EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025 found that EU companies spend nearly 10 hours a week, 9.85 hours on average, chasing overdue invoices, alongside broader findings that over half of EU companies reported difficulties from late payments in 2024, up from both 2023 and 2021.

Australia and New Zealand show a lower reported average, though the way the question was asked differs from the US and EU surveys. GoCardless’s 2025 Pursuing Payments report, based on a YouGov survey of 800 business owners and decision-makers, 500 in Australia and 300 in New Zealand, found that 26% of Australian and 29% of New Zealand businesses spend approximately one hour a week pursuing late payments. That is a per-respondent average across everyone who reported spending any time on it, not a total across all businesses surveyed, which is part of why it reads lower than the US and EU figures.

Government payment periods add to the EU picture specifically: the same Payment Observatory research found government-to-business payments averaged close to 70 days, slower than the private B2B average, which is one reason the administrative burden of following up rarely disappears even when a business’s private-sector clients pay reasonably close to terms.

Figure 2: US mid-sized firms report the heaviest weekly time burden of the three regions measured, though the underlying survey questions are not identical. Source: Wakefield Research for QuickBooks (2021), EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025, GoCardless Pursuing Payments report (2025).

What share of businesses lose entire working days, not just hours?

A weekly-hours average hides how unevenly the burden falls. The same GoCardless Pursuing Payments report found that 20% of Australian and New Zealand companies devote 6 to 12 full working days a year specifically to chasing overdue payments, more than two working weeks for one in five businesses surveyed. That is a materially different picture from the roughly one-hour weekly average reported above: a smaller group is absorbing a much larger share of the total time cost.

The same survey found 63% of Australian and 62% of New Zealand businesses reported losing money to late payments outright, and 17% of Australian businesses estimated monthly losses exceeding $2,500, up from 11% in the prior year’s survey. Time and money losses tend to move together in this data: the businesses spending the most days chasing payments are disproportionately the same ones reporting the largest dollar losses.

The report also asked what businesses would do without the drag. Without payment delays, 24% of Australian and 32% of New Zealand businesses said they would invest in expansion, and 17% and 14% respectively said they would hire additional staff. On the other end of the scale, 10% of all respondents said they had considered closing their business entirely because of the strain, and 68% said they now treat late payments as an unavoidable cost of doing business rather than something worth fighting.

Figure 3: One in five Australian and New Zealand companies loses 6 to 12 full working days a year to chasing overdue payments alone. Source: GoCardless, Pursuing Payments report, YouGov survey of 800 businesses, 2025.

How much time do freelancers lose to invoicing and payment admin?

Freelancers carry a version of this problem that compounds differently, since there is no back-office team to absorb it. Smallpdf’s 2026 Freelancer Freedom Index, a survey of 397 freelancers, found respondents lose an average of 204 hours a year to admin and paperwork, roughly four hours a week, even with AI tools available in their workflow. The report also put a dollar figure on the drag: freelancers estimated losing an average of $6,800 a year in income to admin friction, and 31% said they had lost a client or undercharged for work in the past year because of paperwork problems.

Getting paid on time is a large part of that burden. 54% of freelancers in the same survey said they wait more than a week to get paid after sending an invoice, and 24% wait two weeks or longer. Only a minority are paid within a week of billing, which means most freelance invoicing time is spent following up rather than issuing the original document.

The wait was not even across age groups: 31% of Gen X freelancers reported waiting two weeks or more, the longest of any age bracket in the survey. Document handling adds to the delay before an invoice is even sent: 38% of freelancers named document formatting as their single biggest weekly admin drain, and 35% said they could not tell whether a client had even opened a sent proposal, a visibility gap on the front end of the same problem invoicing has on the back end.

Figure 4: Fewer than half of freelancers are paid within a week of sending an invoice; nearly a quarter wait two weeks or more. Source: Smallpdf, Freelancer Freedom Index, 397 freelancers, 2026.

Is AI or invoicing software actually cutting that time?

Adoption is running well ahead of results. In the Smallpdf survey, 70% of freelancers said they use AI tools for admin tasks and 65% use AI for the billable work clients actually pay for. But only 52% said AI had actually cut their admin workload, meaning close to half, 48%, said it had done little to reduce it. 14% said the admin burden had made them consider quitting freelancing altogether.

Wording matters more than most people assume, and the evidence for it is bigger than any AI-adoption survey. FreshBooks’s analysis of more than 1 million small business invoices found that 89.61% of invoices using the term “Thank You” in the payment terms field got paid, versus 88.07% for “Please,” and 92.15% got paid when the terms included the word “Interest,” language that signals a late fee is in play. None of that requires new software, just a different line of text on a document that already exists, which is a smaller lift than switching AI tools and produced a larger, better-documented effect than most of the automation claims in this space.

The gap suggests the tools freelancers have adopted so far are mostly speeding up document creation, not the follow-up and collection work that eats the most hours. That distinction matters for anyone deciding where to spend automation effort: a faster invoice generator addresses the smaller half of the problem, while the larger half, chasing an invoice after it is sent, needs a scheduled reminder process running independently of whether anyone remembers to click send, the specific mechanic behind how much of an overdue balance a reminder cadence recovers in the first place.

Figure 5: Most freelancers have adopted AI for admin work, but fewer than half say it has actually reduced their admin hours. Source: Smallpdf, Freelancer Freedom Index, 397 freelancers, 2026.

Comparison: Time Spent Chasing Payments by Business Type

Business type / region	Time spent chasing payments	Source
US mid-sized businesses (25-200 employees)	14 hours/week, reported by 65% of firms	Wakefield Research for QuickBooks, 2021
EU companies	9.85 hours/week on average	EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025
AU/NZ businesses that chase payments	~1 hour/week (top 20% lose 6-12 days/year)	GoCardless Pursuing Payments report, 2025
Freelancers (worldwide)	204 hours/year on admin and paperwork	Smallpdf Freelancer Freedom Index, 2026

Table 1: Figures are not a single unified metric, each row measures a different, named survey with its own question wording and sample. Compare trends within a row’s source, not raw numbers across rows.

The Bottom Line

Every version of this question points the same direction: the time cost of getting paid is real, measurable, and unevenly distributed, whether it is 14 hours a week for a mid-sized US business, 6 to 12 lost working days a year for one in five Australian and New Zealand firms, or 204 hours a year for a freelancer with no back office at all. What the data also shows is that faster document creation alone does not fix it, since only 52% of freelancers who adopted AI tools said it actually reduced their admin hours. The lever that does move independently of who remembers to follow up is the reminder itself: FreshBooks’ analysis of more than 1 million invoices found that shorter, clearer payment terms shift how fast money comes in, and a scheduled reminder cadence removes the part of the 14-hour week that depends on someone manually tracking due dates. BillyPaid’s payment reminder tool automates that follow-up on a fixed schedule so the hours spent chasing an invoice do not depend on anyone remembering to send one.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many hours a week do businesses spend chasing late payments? 65% of mid-sized US businesses spend an average of 14 hours a week on payment-collection admin, according to a Wakefield Research survey of 2,000 US businesses with 25 to 200 employees, commissioned by QuickBooks. More recent regional data shows a similar pattern elsewhere: EU companies spend nearly 10 hours a week chasing overdue invoices, according to the European Commission’s EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025.

Is the time burden the same everywhere? No. The heaviest-documented burden is the 14-hour US figure, while EU companies average close to 10 hours a week, per the EU Payment Observatory. In Australia and New Zealand, 20% of companies devote 6 to 12 full working days a year to chasing overdue payments, and 26% of Australian and 29% of New Zealand businesses spend around an hour a week on it, according to GoCardless’s 2025 Pursuing Payments report.

How much time do freelancers lose to invoicing and payment admin each year? Freelancers lose an average of 204 hours a year to admin and paperwork, even while using AI tools, according to Smallpdf’s 2026 Freelancer Freedom Index survey of 397 freelancers. 54% wait more than a week to get paid after sending an invoice, and 24% wait two weeks or longer.

Does AI or invoicing software actually cut the time businesses spend on payment admin? Adoption is running ahead of results. 70% of freelancers in Smallpdf’s 2026 survey said they use AI for admin tasks, but only 52% said it actually cut their admin workload, meaning 48% said AI has done little to reduce it. What does move the needle is invoice structure: FreshBooks found that invoices with 7-day payment terms were paid within 7 days 58.05% of the time, versus 40.22% for 30-day terms (the 30-day-term group alone spanned 1,393,062 invoices).

Sources and References

1. QuickBooks (Wakefield Research) - Midsize Business Payments Research (2021), weekly hours spent on payment-collection admin.
2. European Commission - EU Payment Observatory Annual Report (2025), average weekly hours spent chasing overdue invoices.
3. GoCardless - Pursuing Payments Report, Australia and New Zealand (2025), weekly hours and annual working days spent chasing late payments.
4. Content Grip, reporting Smallpdf’s Freelancer Freedom Index (2026), freelancer admin hours, payment wait times, and AI impact.
5. FreshBooks - Invoice Payment Terms Analysis, more than 1 million invoices (1,393,062 with “30 Days” terms specifically), share of invoices paid on time by stated payment term.

Note: All figures verified as of September 2026.