Steven Renwick has set up Satago (www.satago.co.uk) to provide a platform for subcontractors, small business owners and freelancers to submit information anonymously about the payment behaviour of the companies for which they do work.
“As business owners and freelancers, we each know who pays us late, but by the time we find out about a problem-payer, it’s usually already too late,” he says.
Mr Renwick grew up in a family that ran a small construction business that often suffered from late-payments. With a sense an embedded sense of injustice, he resolved to do something to help small businesses and freelancers get paid on time.
The idea of Satago is that while small suppliers might not turn down work form bigger companies, they can at least plan their cashflow or modify payment terms if they have an idea that it might take months to get paid by them.
As previously reported, the government is set to publish a consultation paper on the subject of late payment and how to tackle it – an apparent admission that the Prompt Payment Code that it backs has done little or nothing to change the behaviour of big companies.
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