Scottish firms had over 1.2 million overdue invoices on their books this winter.

Insolvency and restructuring trade body R3 analysed data from Creditsafe, revealing that 416,856 were due in December, 400,272 in January and 414,575 in February.

Scotland saw the biggest month-on-month increase in late payments between January and February in the UK, with numbers rising by 3.6%.

More than 94,000 Scottish businesses reported that they had overdue invoices on their books this winter – a figure which peaked last month at 32,074 firms, which was 3.7% higher than the January 2023 total of 30,939.

Richard Bathgate, chair of R3 in Scotland, said: “Paying invoices late can be a sign of wider issues within the business, or that it’s financially distressed, and can have a negative knock-on effect on supply chains if the payment issues from one customer are passed on by the supplier to those they owe money to.”

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