Three Weeks to Get Paid: The Hidden Cost of BACS for Garages

For most garage owners, getting paid is the part nobody worries about. The job is done, the customer drives off, the invoice goes out by email, and the money inevitably turns up at some point. But how long it takes, and how much is sitting unpaid at any one moment, is almost never measured.

When it is, the picture is a slow one. New analysis of invoice data across nearly 2,300 garages puts a number on it for the first time: for a large share of workshops, completed work takes weeks to turn into cash.

The good news is that the fix is straightforward, and it’s already built into the software many garages use every day.

The numbers at a glance

• Around 83% of all active garages (approximately 2,300 businesses) still take payment by Bankers' Automated Clearing Services (BACS) bank transfer.
• Around 300,000 BACS payments worth in the region of £125 million were processed between January and June 2026.
• BACS payments take around 20 days to arrive on average, compared with about a day for Pay by Link and same day for card.
• BACS carries the highest average invoice value of any payment method, at around £420, so the biggest jobs wait the longest.
• More than 1,000 garages wait over 15 days on average to be paid by BACS, and some wait more than a month.
• At any one time, an estimated £13 million of completed work sits waiting to clear, roughly £6,000 for the average garage.

Why so many garages still take BACS

BACS is the default for 83% of garages - it’s the standard way to take a payment when the customer isn’t at the counter, and it isn’t used at random. It tends to cluster around a few specific situations:

• Higher-value jobs. A large repair or service bill is far more likely to be settled by bank transfer than tapped on a card at the desk.
• ‍Trade and account customers. Local businesses, fleets and trade accounts expect to settle by BACS on their own terms, and sometimes it’s the only acceptable way for them to pay.
• The customer forgot their card. Rather than hold the vehicle, the garage agrees to take payment later by transfer.
• Keeping the relationship. For a workshop that knows its customers well, accepting an “I’ll pay you later” keeps a long-standing customer happy.

Each of these is a reasonable, customer-friendly choice. But offering that convenience means the garage, not the customer, carries the cost of waiting. And that cost is larger than it looks.

Nearly £125 million, moving at a crawl

Between January and June 2026, these garages took around 300,000 payments by BACS, worth around £125 million, and each took around 20 days to land. By comparison, card and cash cleared the same day.

Twenty days is almost three weeks in which work has been completed, parts have been bought, and technicians have been paid, but the money for the job is still somewhere between the customer’s good intentions and the garage’s bank account.

For a typical garage that means roughly £6,000 of completed work sitting in transit at any one time; across the network, an estimated £13 million of revenue frozen in the gap between finishing a job and being paid for it.

BACS isn't free, it just hides the cost

Most garages reach for BACS precisely because it feels cheap. There’s no card fee, and the customer can pay in their own time. But the real cost of BACS isn’t a fee. It’s time, admin and uncertainty. Every payment has to be matched back to the right job by hand, from a bank reference that may or may not make sense. Multiply that across hundreds of payments a month and it becomes a steady drain on a small team.

The money often doesn’t arrive on its own, either. Once the customer is home, paying means remembering the amount, finding their banking app and logging in. The invoice slips, a reminder gets seen and forgotten, and the office ends up on the phone chasing work that was finished weeks ago.

Sending reminders, matching transfers and calling round can consume hours every week, and many garages end up paying for extra office help or a bookkeeper just to keep on top of who owes what. The convenience the customer enjoys is quietly paid for by the workshop, in cashflow, admin time and sometimes wages.

The bigger the job, the longer the wait

BACS doesn’t just move slowly, it also tends to carry the most valuable work. The average BACS invoice is around £420, the highest of any method and well above the roughly £290 average for card.

Small jobs like an MOT are settled on the spot; it’s the larger services and repairs where the customer is more likely to say they’ll sort it later. So, the jobs that matter most to a garage’s cashflow are exactly the ones most likely to get stuck in the slow lane.

When slow payment turns into bad debt

The 20-day average doesn’t tell the full story. While many garages are paid within a week or two, more than 1,000 wait over 15 days on average, and some wait more than a month.

For those workshops, slow payment is a constant drag: the longer the wait, the more working capital is locked up in money already earned, cash that can’t pay staff, settle parts invoices or cover the rent.

And a payment that’s merely slow can, if left long enough, stop arriving altogether. A friendly “they’ll pay by bank transfer” quietly becomes an aged-debtor list, a portion of which is never recovered. For garages, reducing the time between finishing a job and collecting payment is the single most effective way to stay protected from bad debt.

Get paid the day the job's done

With Pay by Link, the garage sends a secure payment link by SMS or email the moment the invoice is raised. The customer opens it on their phone, pays in seconds, and the money lands the same day, recorded straight against the job in Autowork Online with nothing to match by hand. In practice:

• The job is finished and the invoice is raised in Autowork Online as usual.
• The office sends a Pay by Link payment request by SMS or email in a couple of clicks.
• The customer taps the link and pays from their phone, by card or mobile wallet, in seconds.
• The payment is captured against the job automatically, with no manual reconciliation.

Where a bank transfer takes around 20 days, Pay by Link is typically paid in about a day. It’s the same kind of remote payment, but with the opposite cashflow outcome: faster cash in the bank, far less chasing, and no manual reconciliation at the end of the week.

In practice: Gainsford Hall Workshop

Gainsford Hall Workshop, an independent garage serving a close-knit local community, knew this problem well. With the majority of customers known personally, “just pay it later” had become the norm, leaving tens of thousands of pounds in unpaid invoices at the end of the month.

After adopting Pay by Link inside Autowork Online, the team now sends a payment link the moment a job is finished, and payments that once sat for days or weeks are completed far sooner.

Pay by Link has reduced the need to chase payments, and our customers really value how simple it is to use. They just tap a link on their phone and pay. It’s made the whole payment process much easier and helped customers pay more quickly and on time.”

Kat Waterhouse, Gainsford Hall Workshop

Where to start

The quickest wins come from the payments that are currently the slowest and the largest. There’s no need to change how you handle walk-in card customers, just a better option for the moment someone collects their car and isn’t ready to pay. Pay by Link helps most when:

• The customer collects the vehicle but wants to pay later.
• The job is a larger service or repair with a higher invoice value.
• The customer would otherwise pay by bank transfer or cheque.
• The office is spending time chasing payments for completed work.

Available now, built into the workflow

SMS Pay by Link is now available through Klipboard Money in Autowork Online, so if you already raise invoices in the system, you can start sending payment links today with no new software or setup required.

Book a demo to learn how Pay by Link works inside Autowork Online.

About Klipboard

Klipboard Money is an integrated payments solution that connects directly into Klipboard business management software. Payments are reconciled automatically into one system without manual entry. Built for distributive trades, garages and rental companies, Klipboard Money helps businesses cut down the hidden cost of payments by helping them to get paid faster, cut manual admin and protect against loss from fraud and errors.