In any organisation, a policy must have the active support of senior management if it is to succeed. This message, therefore, seeks your personal commitment to help solve the problem of late payment of debts.

As well as being unethical, the practice of deliberately paying later than the agreed terms is wrong for sound economic reasons:

• It weakens your organisation because it harms your reputation;
• It damages your supply sources and strains your relations with suppliers;
• It weakens the economy as a whole because it constricts growth;
• Late payment is often taken as an indication that the buyer is in difficulties. If you create this impression with your suppliers you may find that their terms worsen. 

Late payment can also be symptomatic of poor relationships between you and your suppliers. The way you manage your purchasing/sales relationship is important to your profit margins. A commitment by you to prompt payment can be a powerful aid to better buying; it will certainly produce closer, more co-operative partnerships between your firm and your suppliers. 

Large corporations in particular enjoy considerable purchasing power. That power carries responsibility. The flow of cash in the economy begins with large organisations and should cascade, not trickle, down the chain of suppliers.

Paying on agreed terms injects more money into UK industry; existing suppliers are kept healthy; new firms are encouraged to compete in the supply arena; buyers benefit from a wider range of supply sources and the UK economy becomes more competitive in the world market.