Late Payment Interest Calculator for UK Freelance Journalists — Statutory Interest and Compensation
A freelance chasing an overdue invoice is in a much stronger position quoting a specific figure than asking politely, but the statutory rate moves with the Bank of England base rate and the compensation sum is banded. Both need checking on the day you write.
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Late Payment Calculator
Calculate statutory interest and compensation for overdue invoices under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.
Enter the invoice amount and number of days overdue to calculate interest.
How it works
- Two inputs: the invoice amount and the number of days overdue.
- The annual rate is the Bank of England base rate plus 8 percentage points, taken from a checked-in file in the repository. At the time of writing that file holds a base rate of 3.75% effective from 18 December 2025, giving 11.75% a year. Daily interest is the amount x (annual rate / 365), and total interest is that daily figure x the days you entered.
- Fixed compensation is banded by invoice value: under £1,000 gives £40, £1,000 to just under £10,000 gives £70, and £10,000 or more gives £100. These figures are read from a shared, dated data file (also used by the Late Payment Letter Generator, so the two tools cannot disagree with each other) rather than typed separately into this component.
- Total amount due is the invoice plus the interest plus the compensation, and the small print below the total states the base rate, the date it took effect and the combined annual percentage actually used.
When to use it
- Before sending a firm chase, so the letter names a figure rather than a grievance.
- When a publisher has sat on an invoice past your stated terms and you want to know what the delay is worth.
- Deciding whether a small overdue invoice is worth escalating, once you can see how little the interest actually amounts to.
- Preparing figures for a formal claim, as a first estimate to be checked against the current rate.
What it does not do
- The base rate comes from a generated file in the repository, not a live feed. The small print under the total now shows when it was last retrieved, so you can see at a glance whether it needs rechecking — but it is still a snapshot, not a live read. If the Monetary Policy Committee has moved rates since that date, every figure here is stale until the file is refreshed; check the Bank of England before quoting a number.
- The £40, £70 and £100 compensation bands and their £1,000 and £10,000 thresholds are read from a dated data file citing s.5A of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, rather than typed into this component. The bands are legislated and rarely change, but confirm them against current GOV.UK guidance if you have any doubt.
- It applies simple interest to the full invoice for the whole period. It does not compound, does not handle part payments, and does not model the convention under which the statutory rate is fixed by reference to the base rate in force at the start of each six-month period.
- Statutory interest applies to commercial transactions between businesses. It does not apply where your client is a consumer, and an express contractual remedy in your terms may displace it. This is an estimate, not legal advice.
More tools
This is one of the free tools on UK JournoHub. See the full tools index for the rest.
Related guides
Primary sources
- Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998— legislation.gov.uk
- Late commercial payments: charging interest and debt recovery— GOV.UK
- Bank Rate— Bank of England