An unusual trend has crept into agency life: more small and midsize business clients seem to treat paying invoices as optional. Not “we had a bad month, can we do a plan?” Optional as in: contract signed, work delivered, invoice sent, then silence. Or worse, a string of polite excuses that buys time while they keep requesting deliverables like nothing happened.

If you feel like this has gotten worse, you are not imagining it.

QuickBooks found that over half of US small businesses surveyed said they are owed money from unpaid invoices, with an average outstanding balance around $17.5K per business. Nearly half reported invoices overdue by more than 30 days. Atradius reported that, in its 2024 US B2B survey, only 42% of invoices were paid on time, with 50% past due and 8% written off as bad debt.

On the agency side, Ignition reports that 71% of agencies say at least one in four invoices gets paid late, and 84% spend hours every month chasing money.

So yes. The air changed. Not because chaos makes people evil. It just changes incentives. It breaks norms. It turns “we …