This panel is a brief summary of the Payment Profile tab and displays how well this company pays its suppliers. Payment performance is a very powerful feature of Credit Guardian, for more information see What is Payment Performance and why is it important. 

The term DBT means Days Beyond Terms; in other words how many days late (beyond the terms agreed) does this company pay its suppliers?. For example, if this value is 0 it means the company pays its suppliers on time (within its terms). If this value is 56, it means it pays its suppliers 56 days AFTER it should have paid them.

This is the number of days beyond terms this company paid its suppliers last month. The (Avg) value is the average DBT this company paid its suppliers over the past 12 months. Therefore if the company has trading terms of 30 days from invoice and they have a DBT of 15, this means, on average, they pay 15 days, i.e. on day 45. The DBT is a good way of seeing how well a company sticks to their payment terms with their suppliers. 

Note: If you hover your mouse over the text area a tooltip box will appear containing more information. 

The Industry DBT or Industry Days Beyond Terms is an average of how late the industry that this company belongs to pays late. The (Avg) value is the average DBT this industry paid its suppliers over the past 12 months. To see which industry this company is placed in see the Payment Profile tab. 

Note: If you hover your mouse over the text area a tooltip box will appear containing more information. 

On the summary panel is an arrow displaying the company's current trend. A green upward arrow denotes an improving performance (they are paying people more quickly), an orange horizontal arrow (pointing to the side) denotes no change whilst a red downward arrow denotes a worsening trend (they are payment people more slowly).

Below the DBT values and the large arrow are 3 smaller indicators of the company's payment performance. These give a quick insight in the trend of the company as the arrows use the same system as the large Large Indicator Arrow to denote improving, consistent or worsening trends. 

The first of these tells you if this company pays early, on time or later than they should. 

The second tells you if this company pays faster, slower or at the same pace as other companies in their industry. 

The third tells you if this company has a consistent, improving or worsening payment pattern. That is – is the way they pay suppliers changing. A worsening payment pattern is of concern because it could be pointing to problems in the company such as cash flow. 

Note: Payment performance information is not always available as Experian does not have payment performance data on all UK companies.