The done-to-paid gap: the days between finishing the work and getting paid

The four stages

The gap is easier to shorten when it is broken into its parts:

1. Completion to evidence: how long it takes for the record of the job (photos, tests, sign-off) to reach the people who review it.
2. Evidence to acceptance: how long the reviewer takes to accept the work or raise a specific exception.
3. Acceptance to invoice: how long it takes to turn accepted work, agreed rates and approved changes into an invoice.
4. Invoice to payment: the customer’s payment terms and behaviour, often measured as days sales outstanding (DSO).

Most businesses track only the last stage. The first three are often where the avoidable days are, and they are within the supplier’s control.

Why it matters

Every day in the gap is working capital tied up: wages, subcontractor payments, vehicles and materials paid for work that has not yet been paid for. For a business with a steady flow of jobs, a longer gap means more cash permanently locked in the cycle, more borrowing or more pressure to delay paying its own partners.

The gap also compounds down the chain. If the accountable business is paid late, its subcontractors usually are too, and the engineer on site is often paid last of all.

What the law says about late payment

Payment terms are a matter of contract and law, and they vary by country:

• In the UK, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 lets businesses claim statutory interest on late commercial payments, at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, plus fixed compensation.
• In the EU, the Late Payment Directive (2011/7/EU) limits business-to-business payment terms to 60 days unless expressly agreed otherwise and not grossly unfair to the creditor, and public authorities generally to 30 days.

These rules govern the invoice-to-payment stage. They do nothing for the days lost before an invoice can be raised, which is why the earlier stages deserve attention.

How to measure it

• Record five timestamps for every job: completed, evidence submitted, accepted, invoiced, then paid.
• Report the median and the spread of each stage, by customer, partner and job type.
• Tag the cause of delays in the first three stages: missing evidence, awaiting reviewer, disputed change, rate query.
• Multiply the days by your cost of funding to see what the gap costs in cash.

How to shorten it

• Capture evidence on site so it reaches the reviewer the same day.
• Set acceptance criteria before the job, so review is a check, not an investigation.
• Approve changes as they happen, so the invoice is not held up by a query about extra work.
• Raise the invoice from the accepted record, not from a separate spreadsheet.
• Agree payment terms that start from acceptance, and make acceptance fast.

Each of the five costs of unproven work adds days to the gap. Removing them is the cheapest way to shorten it.

How FortyFive shortens the gap

FortyFive connects the stages on one record: the engineer’s evidence goes straight to review, acceptance is recorded against the criteria and the invoice is drawn from the accepted work. FortyFive | Pay is being developed to connect that record to payment, with factoring and extended terms planned through finance partners, subject to eligibility and terms. See how a job moves through FortyFive.

Sources

• Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, legislation.gov.uk.
• Directive 2011/7/EU on combating late payment in commercial transactions, EUR-Lex.
• McGrathNicol, Working Capital Report 2024: Building Products: average DSO of 53.7 days in an Australian adjacent-sector sample.
• FortyFive, The cost of unproven work, white paper, 2026.