The Payment Times Reporting Scheme (PTRS) requires large Australian businesses to report how quickly they pay their small suppliers, and since the 2024 reforms the slowest payers in each industry can be directed to declare it publicly. Most PTRS risk starts as a data problem: consolidating accounts payable across entities, identifying in-scope suppliers and measuring payment times accurately. Automation handles that data work well.
Key takeaways
- The Payment Times Reporting Amendment Act 2024 applies to reporting periods starting on or after 1 July 2024.
- Reporting uses a $100 million consolidated revenue threshold on a group basis.
- The slowest 20 per cent of payers in an industry division can be directed to disclose slow-payer status in their own materials.
- A lot of apparent slow-payer risk comes from bad timestamps, unmatched supplier data and manual consolidation.
- Automation prepares accurate data and early warnings. Payment policy and report sign-off stay with finance leadership.
What changed in the Payment Times Reporting Scheme?
The PTRS has existed since 2020. For most of that time it was a disclosure obligation: large businesses reported how quickly they paid their small suppliers and the data went onto a public register. The Payment Times Reporting Amendment Act 2024 changed its character for reporting periods starting on or after 1 July 2024.
The most important change is the slow payer mechanism. Under the reformed scheme, administered by the Payment Times Reporting Regulator, the slowest 20 per cent of payers in each industry division can be directed by the Minister to publicly disclose their slow-payer status. That disclosure can be required on your website, in financial statements and in other business documents, in front of the customers and partners you sell to.
A direction can apply where an entity has been classified as a slow payer for two consecutive reporting cycles, or was a slow payer in one cycle and failed to report in the cycle before or after. Slow payment and poor reporting compound.
There is an upside list too. Businesses that consistently pay their small suppliers within 20 days can be recognised on a fast payer list on the public Payment Times Reports Register.
- Reporting threshold$100M consolidated revenue
- Direction riskSlowest 20% per industry division
- TriggerTwo slow cycles, or one plus a missed report
- Fast payer recognitionPaid within 20 days
Why is payment times reporting a data problem first?
The instinctive reaction to slow-payer risk is "we need to pay faster". Sometimes that is right. Often, though, both the exposure and the reporting errors trace back to data you cannot trust. You have to measure payment times correctly before you can improve them.
Consolidation. The $100 million test uses consolidated group reporting aligned with accounting standards. A reporting entity often pulls payment data from several controlled entities, each possibly on a different finance system with its own supplier master and its own way of recording invoice receipt and payment. Many groups reconcile this by hand every period.
Supplier identification. You only report on payments to in-scope small suppliers. Determining which of thousands of suppliers qualify cannot be done by eye. The Regulator provides an identification tool for this. Matching your supplier master against it, keeping it current and doing it consistently across entities is high-volume, rules-based work where manual processes drift.
Measurement. Payment time runs from a defined start point to the day of payment. Inconsistent receipt dates, or invoices sitting in approval queues without clean timestamps, make reported times wrong in either direction. The Regulator lists false or misleading reports among its compliance and enforcement priorities, alongside late reporting and non-compliance with directions.
| Assumed cause | Common real cause | Impact | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late payments | Holding cash | Approval bottlenecks | Fixable |
| Wrong payment times | Slow AP team | Bad receipt timestamps | Data issue |
| Missed suppliers | Oversight | Unmatched supplier classification | Matching gap |
| Group inconsistency | Policy difference | Disconnected ledgers | Consolidation gap |
| Reporting errors | Carelessness | Manual reconciliation | Process risk |
If much of your apparent risk is measurement error and unmatched supplier data, cleaning the data is cheaper and faster than paying everyone early, and it gives you an accurate base for real payment decisions.
Where does AI help with payment times reporting, and where can it not?
AI cannot decide to pay a supplier earlier. That is a working capital decision for finance leadership. It cannot determine your legal reporting obligations or sign off a report. It can make the data under those decisions accurate, current and consistent.
- ConsolidateUnify AP data across group entities
- IdentifyMatch in-scope suppliers
- MeasureCompute payment times cleanly
- MonitorTrack against the 20-day line
- ReportProduce a defensible submission
- Consolidate. Bringing AP data from several entities and systems into one dataset is repetitive, rules-driven work. The approach matches what we describe for multi-entity financial consolidation.
- Identify. Supplier classification is high-volume and ongoing. Clean capture at supplier onboarding makes it far more reliable downstream.
- Measure. AI-assisted reconciliation flags invoices with missing or inconsistent receipt dates and surfaces those stuck in approval. It is a close relative of reconciliation automation.
- Monitor. The mechanism punishes drift over consecutive cycles, so recalculating your position against the 20-day line and your division's slow band on a regular cadence gives time to act.
- Report. Producing the submission from consolidated data, traceable to source, turns a fortnight of spreadsheets into a review-and-sign exercise. A person signs off, because the accountability is theirs.
Changing payment terms, sequencing payments when cash is tight, and responding to a slide toward the slow band remain leadership calls.
How do you read your own payment times before the Regulator does?
Two features of the mechanism reward close monitoring.
It is relative by industry division. You are measured against other reporters in your division. A payment time safe in one industry might sit in the bottom fifth of another where fast payment is normal. Knowing where the band sits for your division, and your trend against it, is more useful than a round-number internal target.
It needs consecutive cycles. A single slow period is a warning. That warning only helps if you see it. A business that reconstructs payment times once, at reporting time, learns about a bad cycle after it closes. A business that monitors continuously sees deterioration mid-cycle, while there is time to clear an approval backlog or prioritise small suppliers.
Reporting accuracy and payment behaviour are linked. Because a missed report can combine with one slow cycle to trigger a direction, clean automated reporting removes a whole category of self-inflicted exposure, leaving only genuine payment performance to manage.
How should finance data be governed in PTRS automation?
Supplier payment data, bank details and cash positions are commercially sensitive. Sending them to a general-purpose AI service that may retain or train on inputs is a real risk. Run the analysis on your own infrastructure in Australia, with clear rules on what the system can access, and share outputs only with the people who need them. Our guide to AI agent governance and data access sets out the control model.
What is your most pressing constraint?
- Data spread across group entitiesConsolidate AP data first
- Cannot identify in-scope suppliersFix supplier matching
- Payment times look wrongClean receipt timestamps
- Reports take weeks to buildAutomate the submission pipeline
If you cannot confidently explain how your payment time numbers are calculated and where the source data comes from, that uncertainty is the risk. A data readiness assessment shows whether your systems support accurate reporting today.
Is the fast payer list worth pursuing?
Most discussion of the reformed scheme is defensive. Staying out of the slowest 20 per cent is the right first priority, but the fast payer list is a reputational asset for organisations that want to be a customer of choice for small suppliers or compete for work where supplier relationships matter.
Getting there takes consistent fast payment across a full reporting period and the data to prove it. With clean approval workflows, properly captured receipt dates and a rolling view of your payment time distribution against the 20-day line, it becomes a manageable operational goal. If your data is a mess, you cannot tell whether you already qualify. The same capability protects the downside and opens the upside.
What does a realistic PTRS automation rollout look like?
Get the data trustworthy before you make payment policy decisions from it.
- Weeks 1-3Map the dataAudit AP systems, receipt-date capture and supplier master across entities
- Weeks 4-7Consolidate and matchUnify AP data and match suppliers to the scheme's definitions
- Weeks 8-10Validate the numbersReconcile computed payment times against known cases, running alongside the existing process
- Weeks 11-13Monitor and reportMove to continuous monitoring and a review-and-sign reporting cadence
The value blends reclaimed time and avoided risk: finance hours moved off manual reconciliation, early warning before a slow cycle becomes two, a defensible submission, and board assurance on a public, reputational metric. Faster, more accurate payment also supports supplier relationships and connects to wider cash flow forecasting work.
How Solve8 can help
Our consultants and engineers build the consolidation, supplier matching and monitoring behind accurate payment times reporting, as part of our process automation and data and reporting work. It runs on your infrastructure in Australia and a person approves every submission. Talk to us about your reporting setup.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Thresholds, definitions and obligations are set by the Payment Times Reporting Regulator and can change, so confirm your position with the Regulator and your advisers.
