How to tell whether a company pays its suppliers: payment experiences and public data

In brief: to know whether a company pays its suppliers you have four sources. Payment experiences collected by business information companies, which are private, paid databases. The filed financial statements, from which you can calculate how many days on average the company takes to pay its suppliers. Public registers of protests and procedures, which show the most serious cases. And, if the customer is a public administration, the payment timeliness indicator that every body must publish by law. Used together, they give a more reliable picture than any one of them alone.

What are payment experiences?

They are data on how a company has paid its suppliers' invoices: on the due date, a few days late, months late. There is no public register of this data. It is collected by business information companies, which ask their own customers to share their accounting records in anonymous form. Some examples, as described by the providers themselves:

Two limits to keep in mind. The data only covers suppliers that take part in the exchange, so for a small company it may be missing or based on just a few cases. And the data is only available within the products of the providers that collect it, usually on subscription.

What does the financial statement tell you about payments to suppliers?

For limited companies, which file their financial statements, you can estimate how many days they take on average to pay suppliers. This is the DPO, average payment days:

DPO = trade payables ÷ purchases for the year × 365

• Trade payables are in the balance sheet, under liabilities, item D.7 of the schedule in article 2424 of the Italian Civil Code.
• Purchases are approximated with the income statement costs for raw materials and goods (item B.6) and for services (item B.7), adding VAT if the payables include it, as usually happens.

Hypothetical example: trade payables €300,000, purchases and services €1,000,000 plus 22% VAT, that is €1,220,000. DPO = 300,000 ÷ 1,220,000 × 365 ≈ 90 days. If the customer asks for 60 days but pays others in 90, you know what to expect.

Two cautions: the figure is a year-end average, so it can be distorted by seasonal purchases, and in the abbreviated financial statements of small companies payables may be shown without distinguishing suppliers. How to read the rest of the financial statements is explained in the guide on how to read a customer's financial statements.

Protests and procedures: the most serious cases

The electronic register of protests kept by the Chambers of Commerce records unpaid bills of exchange and cheques. Insolvency procedures and liquidations appear in the Business Register (Registro Imprese). This data is public and objective, but it only shows the final stage: a company can pay all its suppliers at 120 days without a single protest. What they mean is explained in protests, prejudicial annotations and insolvency procedures.

If the customer is a public administration

Here you have an advantage: article 33 of Legislative Decree 33/2013 requires public administrations to publish every year and every quarter the payment timeliness indicator, together with the total amount of debts and the number of creditor companies. You will find it in the 'Transparent administration' (Amministrazione trasparente) section of the body's website, under 'Payments of the administration'.

The indicator is an average of the days between the due date and payment, weighted by the amount of the invoices. A negative value means the body pays on average before the due date; a positive value indicates how many days late it pays. Remember also that, towards public administrations, the payment term may not exceed 60 days (article 4, para. 4, of Legislative Decree 231/2002).

Asking for references: does it still work?

Yes, if you do it well. Ask the customer for two or three suppliers it has worked with for at least a year, then call them yourself with precise questions: how long they have been working together, what terms they grant, whether it pays on the due date, whether there have been unpaid invoices. A reference supplier who does not answer, or answers vaguely, is information too. References do not replace data, but they fill exactly the gap in payment experiences for small companies.

Your own experience is the best data

For a customer you already have, no database is worth as much as your payment schedule. Measure how many days it actually takes to pay you and compare it with the agreed terms: this is the DSO by customer. If the delay grows from one quarter to the next, it is time to review the credit line, before the customer reaches the signals of the Business Crisis Code, such as debts to suppliers overdue by more than 90 days exceeding those not yet overdue. The full picture is in the guide on commercial credit risk.

Sources

• Creditsafe, Companies' payment experiences (accessed 11/11/2026)
• Cerved, 'Credit risk: the Cerved score becomes forward looking' (accessed 01/11/2026)
• CRIBIS, Payments Study, second quarter 2026 (accessed 27/10/2026)
• Legislative Decree (D.Lgs.) 33/2013, art. 33 (Normattiva, accessed 11/11/2026)
• Chamber of Commerce of Ferrara Ravenna, Payment timeliness indicator: calculation method (accessed 11/11/2026)
• Italian Civil Code, art. 2424 and art. 2425 (Normattiva)

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