Vendors do the work. Then they
fight to get paid.
We asked 417 small and mid-sized vendors across 5 industry verticals how they really handle portals, payments, and compliance. The answers point to problems that VendorAccess believes better tooling can remove.
51.6%Name late payments as their #1 problem
1 in 6Wait 31+ days from invoice to cash
83.7%Pay something in admin fees just to get paid
Six themes, one story.
Ranked by signal strength across all segments, the findings converge on a single point: vendors do the work, then fight to get paid and stay compliant.
Late payment is the #1 problem in every segment
51.6% of clients paying late outranks processing fees (22.1%) and scope disputes (18.9%). It isn’t a paperwork problem, it's a structural cash flow problem, and the smallest vendors feel it most.
Negotiating payment terms is the hardest part of onboarding
29% of respondents say payment negotiation is harder than filing paperwork (24%) and portal learning curves as the toughest part of taking on a new client.
Fewer portals don’t mean less administrative work
Nearly half of the respondents log into just 1–2 portals a month, yet more than 60% still lose 2–10 hours a week to portal administration.
Many vendors still haven’t adopted accounting software
58.5% use QuickBooks, making it the leading accounting platform. Yet 26.1% still rely on pen, paper, or spreadsheets.
Compliance paperwork is a hidden, recurring drain
Only 26% of respondents spend less than one hour per month on compliance-related tasks, while 12% spend more than nine hours.
Roughly 1 in 6 vendors wait 31+ days to get paid
A majority (57%) are paid within 15 days, 17% are waiting 31–90 days.
What vendors would change
When we asked what one thing they'd change about how the industry handles payments, portals, and onboarding.
“I would find a platform that could do all three processes so I don't have to learn multiple applications.”
“I would like to consolidate payments into just a handful of options. People want us to accept some obscure app I've never heard of, and there's no way to keep up.”
"I would simplify multi-layered invoice approval workflows on client portals to drastically reduce payment wait times after submission.”
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