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Late Payment Cost Calculator

See how much unpaid invoices are really costing you. Slide in your numbers and get the tied-up-cash figure in seconds.

Average invoice amount$2,400
Invoices per month12
Your payment termsNet 15
Days you actually wait34 days
Cost of capital (financing / opportunity)12%

The annual rate your cash could earn — or costs you when it's stuck in receivables (a line of credit, a card balance, or the next job's materials).

Late payments are costing you
$180/ month
That's $2,160 a year in tied-up cash.
$32,211
Cash stuck in unpaid invoices
19 days
Paid beyond your terms
With Sparkbill, paid ~2 weeks faster
You'd put back about$133/ mo
More than covers the flat $49/mo — and stops the after-hours chasing.
Get paid faster — get the app
Know a tradesperson bleeding cash on slow-payers? Send them this.

What do late payments actually cost a trade business?

Every day an invoice sits unpaid, that money isn't working for you. It's cash you can't use for materials, payroll, or the next job — so you float it on a credit card or a line of credit, or you simply go without. This calculator estimates the carrying cost of that tied-up cash based on how much you invoice, how long you wait, and what your capital costs.

How the math works

We take your average daily billings and multiply by the days clients pay beyond your terms to get the cash tied up late. Then we apply your cost of capital to turn that into a monthly and annual dollar figure. It's a conservative estimate — it doesn't even count the invoices that never get paid at all, or the hours you spend chasing them.

How to get paid faster

Sparkbill sends invoices by text with a Pay Now button (card + ACH) and auto-chases them with reminders until they're paid. Trades on Sparkbill get paid about two weeks faster — pulling that cash off the calculator above and back into your account. You keep your own Stripe; we take 0% markup.