Which Industry Pays Slowest 2026: 11.37% Overdue [Data]

Key Takeaways

Food and Beverage Services has the highest 60+ day overdue rate of any Australian industry, 11.37%, ahead of Utilities (8.16%) and Real Estate Services (7.51%), per CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index, April 2026.
Construction ranks fourth, not first, at 7.15% overdue by 60+ days, behind three other Australian industries.
Retail Trade is the fastest-paying industry tracked, at 6.59% overdue by 60+ days, the lowest of the six industries CreditorWatch ranks.
Germany’s construction sector had roughly two-thirds of B2B invoices overdue in 2025, well above the Western Europe regional average of 47% (Atradius).
91.3% of US manufacturers report a consistent 1 to 5% revenue loss from late payment, and 44.4% of tech/SaaS finance leaders report severe or critical cash-flow disruption from it (Kaplan Group survey, February 2025).
Large US healthcare companies average 45 days sales outstanding, unchanged between 2021 and 2022 (HighRadius analysis of Fortune 500 healthcare firms).

Food and Beverage Services, not Construction, has the highest share of overdue invoices of any Australian industry: 11.37% of invoices are more than 60 days overdue, according to CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index for April 2026. Construction, the industry most people assume tops every late-payment ranking, actually comes in fourth out of the six industries CreditorWatch tracks this way. That industry-level gap sits inside a much broader pattern of late payment across the whole invoicing market: some industries have a genuine structural cash-flow problem, and others just get talked about more.

Which industry has the most overdue invoices in Australia?

CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index, published April 2026, ranks industries by the share of invoices more than 60 days overdue, drawn from the company’s commercial credit-reporting data on Australian businesses. Food and Beverage Services leads at 11.37%, followed by Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste Services at 8.16%, and Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services at 7.51%. Construction sits fourth at 7.15%, just ahead of Transport, Postal and Warehousing at 7.09%. Retail Trade has the lowest rate of the six, at 6.59%.

Figure 1: Share of invoices over 60 days overdue by industry, Australia, April 2026. Source: CreditorWatch Business Risk Index, April 2026.

Industry	Share of invoices 60+ days overdue	Rank
Food and Beverage Services	11.37%	1 (slowest)
Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste Services	8.16%	2
Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services	7.51%	3
Construction	7.15%	4
Transport, Postal and Warehousing	7.09%	5
Retail Trade	6.59%	6 (fastest)

Table 1: Full CreditorWatch industry ranking by 60+ day overdue share, Australia, April 2026.

Why is Food and Beverage Services the worst offender, not Construction?

Hospitality and food service businesses run on thinner margins and shorter cash cycles than most other sectors, which cuts both ways: a restaurant, cafe, or catering business often has less room to absorb a slow-paying customer, but it also tends to sell into a market, other hospitality and event businesses, corporate catering clients, wholesale food distributors, where payment terms get stretched more casually than in an industry with hard contractual milestones. CreditorWatch’s ranking measures a point-in-time snapshot of overdue accounts receivable, not a survey of businesses’ opinions about their own payment problems, which is part of why it produces a different answer than the conventional wisdom about construction. A BillyPaid invoice sent with a payable link and built-in reminders removes one of the easiest ways a food and beverage invoice slips past 60 days: nobody chased it before the customer moved on to other bills.

Figure 2: The three Australian industries with the highest 60+ day overdue rate, April 2026. Source: CreditorWatch Business Risk Index.

Is construction’s slow-payment reputation deserved anywhere?

Not in this particular Australian dataset, where construction ranks fourth of six. But construction’s reputation holds up more clearly overseas. Atradius’s B2B Payment Practices Barometer for Western Europe, 2025, found overdue payments affecting roughly two-thirds of B2B invoices in Germany’s construction sector, a rate well above the Western Europe regional average of 47% of B2B credit sales overdue across all industries the same report covers. Central and Eastern Europe averaged 53% overdue and Asia averaged 44%, per the same 2025 barometer series, giving a rough sense of how unusual Germany’s two-thirds construction figure is even against other regions’ full-economy averages, not just against Germany’s own. Spain shows a related pattern, though on a different measure: Atradius’s 2025 Spain report found 63% of B2B sales in the Spanish construction sector are made on credit rather than paid upfront, well above cash-heavy industries such as retail. That heavier reliance on credit terms is part of why a single delayed payment ripples further through a construction business’s cash flow than it does through a business that collects most of its revenue at the point of sale.

Figure 3: Construction overdue rate vs regional B2B averages, 2025. Source: Atradius B2B Payment Practices Barometer, Western Europe / Central and Eastern Europe / Asia 2025 reports.

Construction’s payment cycle is also structurally different from most other industries: progress billing tied to project milestones, retainage clauses that hold back a percentage of payment until final sign-off, and multiple layers of approval between a subcontractor’s invoice and an eventual payment all add real time to the cycle before a payment can even be called late. That structural lag does not show up as cleanly in a 60-day snapshot like CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index, which is one reason construction’s Australian ranking can sit lower than its reputation while its European overdue rate runs far above the regional average.

Which US industries feel late payment the hardest?

A February 2025 survey of 100 US finance decision-makers, CFOs, VPs of finance, controllers, and directors of finance at companies with $10M to $1B-plus in annual revenue, run by the Kaplan Group, found the cash-flow damage from late payment lands unevenly across industries. Manufacturing reported the most consistent hit: 91.3% of manufacturers said late payment causes a steady 1% to 5% loss of revenue. Technology and SaaS companies reported the sharpest edge cases, with 44.4% describing severe or critical cash-flow disruption and 22.2% losing more than 10% of annual revenue to it. Professional services firms were milder but still notable, at 38.5% reporting significant disruption, and healthcare landed in between, with 33.3% reporting severe or critical disruption and 15.4% losing more than 10% of revenue specifically to invoices 90-plus days past due.

Industry	Late-payment impact (Kaplan Group survey, Feb 2025)
Manufacturing	91.3% report a consistent 1-5% revenue loss from late payment
Technology / SaaS	44.4% report severe or critical cash-flow disruption; 22.2% lose 10%+ of annual revenue
Healthcare	33.3% report severe or critical disruption; 15.4% lose 10%+ of revenue to invoices 90+ days overdue
Professional Services	38.5% report significant cash-flow disruption

Table 2: Late-payment impact by US industry. Source: Kaplan Group survey, 100 finance decision-makers, February 2025. Each row reflects a different reported metric; figures are not directly comparable across rows.

How long does it take healthcare providers to get paid?

Healthcare’s payment cycle runs on insurance claims processing rather than direct customer payment for most of its revenue, which pushes its days sales outstanding (DSO) higher than a typical retail or services business. A HighRadius analysis of order-to-cash metrics at the top 25 Fortune 500 healthcare companies, spanning pharmaceutical, medical supplies, hospital and health-system, and health-insurance businesses, found DSO held steady at 45 days in both 2021 and 2022, down from 50 days in 2019 and 48 days in 2020. The four-year average across that period was 47 days.

Figure 4: Healthcare accounts receivable, days sales outstanding, 2019 to 2022. Source: HighRadius analysis of the top 25 Fortune 500 healthcare companies.

That figure covers large, publicly reporting healthcare companies rather than small practices, and a solo or small-group practice’s own DSO typically runs higher, closer to the 45-to-70-day range other healthcare billing benchmarks describe, since a smaller operation has less staff dedicated to chasing claims and appeals. The gap between what a large healthcare company reports and what a small practice actually experiences is a useful reminder that industry averages compress a lot of variation most small businesses feel directly.

Which industry actually gets paid fastest?

Retail Trade has the lowest 60+ day overdue rate of any industry in CreditorWatch’s April 2026 ranking, 6.59%, roughly 4.8 percentage points below Food and Beverage Services at the top of the same list. That gap makes sense given how differently the two sectors collect payment: retail transactions, especially in-person and e-commerce sales, settle at or near the point of sale far more often than a hospitality business’s invoiced corporate and wholesale accounts do, which leaves retail with far less exposure to the slow drift into 60-plus-day territory. Businesses that build a payable link and automatic reminders into every invoice push their own numbers closer to retail’s end of this range than construction’s or food service’s.

Figure 5: Retail Trade has the lowest 60+ day overdue share of any ranked industry, Australia, April 2026. Source: CreditorWatch Business Risk Index, April 2026.

The Bottom Line

The industry with the worst late-payment reputation is not always the one the data actually points to. In Australia, Food and Beverage Services carries the highest 60+ day overdue rate, 11.37%, while Construction, the industry most commonly blamed, ranks fourth at 7.15%, behind Utilities and Real Estate Services too. Construction’s international numbers, particularly Germany’s roughly two-thirds overdue rate in 2025, show the reputation is not baseless everywhere, just not universally true. What matters more for a small business than which industry gets blamed in the press is how many days its own invoices actually take to collect and what that costs in staff time chasing it down. A BillyPaid invoice with a payable link and built-in reminders is the same fix regardless of which industry a business happens to sit in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which industry has the most overdue invoices? Food and Beverage Services has the highest share of invoices overdue by more than 60 days of any Australian industry, 11.37%, according to CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index for April 2026. Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste Services (8.16%) and Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services (7.51%) round out the top three.

Is construction really the slowest-paying industry? Not in Australia. Construction ranks fourth out of six industries CreditorWatch tracks for invoices overdue by 60+ days, at 7.15%, behind Food and Beverage Services, Electricity/Gas/Water/Waste Services, and Rental/Real Estate Services. Construction’s reputation holds up better internationally: Atradius found overdue payments affecting around two-thirds of B2B invoices in Germany’s construction sector in 2025, well above the Western Europe regional average of 47%.

Which industry gets paid fastest? Of the six industries CreditorWatch ranks, Retail Trade has the lowest share of invoices overdue by 60+ days, 6.59%, in the April 2026 Business Risk Index. That is roughly 4.8 percentage points below Food and Beverage Services, the slowest-paying industry in the same dataset.

How long does it take healthcare providers to get paid? Large US healthcare companies carried an average days sales outstanding (DSO) of 45 days in both 2021 and 2022, per a HighRadius analysis of the top 25 Fortune 500 healthcare companies, with a four-year average of 47 days. Smaller practices typically run higher, since a larger share of their revenue depends on insurance claims processing rather than direct payment.