Sector cash cycles, worked through with published dates

At a glance

Days from the end of the month to the money

Counted from the last day of the month the dispensing or the work was done. The pharmacy and construction rows use the worked examples below; the marketplace row is the published payout interval.

Case 1: community pharmacy

July 2026 dispensing: an advance on 11 August, the balance on 1 October

A pharmacy in England dispenses NHS prescriptions all through July 2026. It submits its end of month declaration through the NHSBSA's Manage Your Service portal by 5 August 2026. Community Pharmacy England explains that the advance is "based on the items declared on the FP34C and the latest available Average Item Value (AIV) for that pharmacy, less the value of prescription charges declared", paid four working days after the submission deadline, with the final reconciliation on "the 1st working day of the month approximately two months after" submission (CPE: monthly payments).

Say the advance works out at £96,000 and the month, once every item has been priced, comes to £100,000. Those two amounts are ours, for illustration. The dates are the NHSBSA's.

Two things follow. First, when the submission is on time and the advance is close to the priced total, as it is here, most of the month is paid inside a fortnight, so the real working capital question is how the wholesaler's terms line up against the advance date, not the headline "two months". Second, the reconciled difference is the part a lender tends to miss. It moves with the mix of items, and a month heavy with expensive medicines can leave a larger balance outstanding for 62 days.

Submitting late changes the first date, not the second. On the NHSBSA's late timetable, July 2026 dispensing submitted after the 5th but by 21 August 2026 is paid on 1 September 2026: the spreadsheet gives one pay date for "reconciled prescriptions including advances". That's 21 days later than the on-time advance. Miss the latest date and, the NHSBSA says, no advance is calculated.

Every 2026 dispensing month

The same arithmetic for each month on the 2026 timetable. The early advance lands 9 to 12 days after month end, and the reconciliation 58 to 63 days after it, with the spread coming from weekends, bank holidays and month lengths.

More on how the sector gets misread by generalist lenders: community pharmacy.

Case 2: construction subcontractor

A £50,000 valuation: £40,850 on the day, the rest on three other clocks

A limited company subcontractor, registered for CIS and paid under deduction at 20%, works on a subcontract with monthly valuation periods and a 5% retention. The subcontract doesn't set its own due dates, so the statutory Scheme for Construction Contracts fills the gap. Under it, an interim payment becomes due on the later of seven days after the end of the relevant period and the making of a claim, and the final date for payment is 17 days after that (Scheme, Part II, paragraphs 4 and 8). July's work is valued at £50,000 excluding VAT, and 30% of it is materials the subcontractor bought itself. The amounts and the retention rate are our example; 5% is the figure the government's 2017 consultation called typical (GOV.UK: retention payments consultation).

The same valuation at each CIS status

What arrives on 24 August 2026 depends on the status HMRC has given the subcontractor. The retention is the same in every column.

The CIS deduction isn't lost, but a limited company only gets it back by paying less PAYE. GOV.UK says to send the Full Payment Submission as usual and an Employer Payment Summary with the year-to-date CIS total, and HMRC "will take your CIS deductions off what you owe". A company whose PAYE bill for the month is smaller than £6,650 carries the rest forward, but only within the same tax year; anything left after 5 April 2027 has to be claimed as a refund (GOV.UK: pay tax and claim back deductions). A small subcontractor with few employees can therefore have CIS money tied up for months, not 53 days. A sole trader waits longer still: deductions are set against the Self Assessment bill for the tax year, and any tax still owing for 2026 to 2027 is due by 31 January 2028.

How each part is read by a lender, and what fits: construction retentions and CIS. To run your own contract's retention dates, use the retention release estimator.

Case 3: marketplace seller

A fortnightly payout, and what it holds at any one time

Amazon's UK guide for new sellers says that under Fulfilment by Amazon it "collects payment from the customer and pays you available funds every two weeks" (Amazon UK: beginner's guide). That interval is the whole published cycle; how long stock sat before it sold is the seller's own number.

At an example £1,000 a day of sales, spread evenly, a sale on the first day of the cycle waits 14 days and one on the last day waits almost none. Just before each payout about £14,000 of sales, less fees and refunds, is sitting with the platform; averaged across the fortnight it's about £7,000. The word "available" matters: funds held back for returns, disputes or a reserve aren't in that payout. How eBay and Shopify describe their holds, and why a payout isn't an invoice a funder can advance against, is on online businesses and marketplace sellers.

What the cases have in common

The cash leaves on one clock and returns on several

In each case the business pays out on ordinary terms (a wholesaler, wages and materials, a stock supplier) and gets paid on a timetable it didn't set and can't negotiate. The gaps are predictable to the day, which is why a revolving credit line sized for the cycle usually fits better than a loan, and why the monthly figures a lender should look at are the NHSBSA schedule of payments, the CIS statements and retention ledger, or the platform's settlement reports, rather than annual accounts.

Sources

Pharmacy dates: NHSBSA pharmacy payment timetable, both 2026 spreadsheets, and Community Pharmacy England: monthly payments. Construction payment dates: Scheme for Construction Contracts (England and Wales) Regulations 1998, Schedule, Part II. CIS: deductions, paying HMRC, claiming back deductions, PAYE due dates and CIS 340, all on GOV.UK. Retention practice: GOV.UK retention payments consultation (2017). Marketplace payouts: Amazon UK beginner's guide. All read on 24 September 2026. The example amounts, the day counts and the CIS arithmetic are ours.