India: the payment climate
| Finding | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| B2B invoices overdue at due date | just over 50% | Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, India |
| Average delay beyond due date | 34 days | Atradius PPB, India |
| B2B invoices written off as bad debt | ~5% | Atradius PPB, India |
| Companies expecting insolvencies to rise | 71% | Atradius PPB, India |
| Listed logistics receivable days (TCI) | 54–60 days | ICRA rating rationale |
| Road logistics structure | ~70% advance to truckers vs 60–90 day customer collection | ICRA rating rationale |
UAE and the Gulf
| Finding | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| B2B credit sales paid late | avg 51% | Atradius PPB, UAE |
| Bad debts | avg 4% of B2B invoices | Atradius PPB, UAE |
| >90-day waits (earlier vintage) | surged +75%; transport firms turned to short-term finance | Atradius PPB, UAE 2023 |
Asia and global context
| Finding | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average payment delay, Asia | 65 days | Coface Asia Payment Survey |
| Companies carrying ultra-long delays >2% of turnover | 40% (up from 23%) | Coface Asia Payment Survey |
| Share of 180+ day delays never paid | ~80% | Coface |
| Global DSO (all sectors) | 59 days — largest annual jump since 2008 | Allianz Trade |
| Companies on payment terms >60 days | 42% globally; 46% in Asia | Allianz Trade |
| Global working capital requirement | 76 days of turnover (APAC: 81) | Allianz Trade |
The Coface finding is the one to act on: once an invoice crosses 180 days, history says four-fifths of that money is gone. Every collections decision — tiering, escalation timing, credit terms — is ultimately about keeping invoices out of that bucket.
What a worked book looks like
Against those industry baselines, deployment-measured results from a live collections desk (Infinity Logistics FZE, UAE — the same deployment whose quoting numbers are published): DSO tracked daily instead of month-end, tier-aware chasing keeping key accounts warm, bank receipts auto-reconciled— with disputes and 60+ escalations always human. Third-party proof that AR automation moves forwarder numbers exists too: Upflow’s published OVRSEA case (digital forwarder) reports ~70% of AR actions automated and DSO down 28%.
This page will host our quarterly Freight Receivables Benchmarks — anonymized DSO distributions, promise-kept rates and aging curves from live forwarder books. Country-level data exists (above); forwarder-specific benchmarks don't. We intend to publish them.
Benchmark your own book.
The calculator turns your monthly sales and DSO into the cash number these benchmarks imply.
Open the calculator