Research report
AR Days Benchmark 2026
DSO benchmarks by industry vary from under 30 days in retail and hospitality to 60 days or more in construction, staffing and healthcare payer receivables, according to published working-capital surveys. The AR Days Benchmark will add LedgerBPO’s anonymised AR aging data by industry once the owner approves the first release; the method is published now.
- Sourced market data now
- First-party dataset in the next edition
- CC BY 4.0
- CSV download
What the published data says
| Sector | Typical DSO pattern (published) | Why | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail, restaurants, fitness | Under 15 days | Card and POS settlement, little trade credit | Working-capital surveys (Hackett, Atradius) |
| Professional services and agencies | 40 to 60 days | Net-30 terms, retainers, milestone invoices | Atradius Payment Practices Barometer |
| Construction and field services | 55 to 75 days | Progress billing, retainage, pay-when-paid chains | Industry working-capital surveys |
| Staffing | 45 to 60 days | Weekly payroll funded ahead of client payment | Industry surveys |
| Healthcare (payer AR) | 30 to 50 days for clean claims; over 90 for denials | Payer adjudication cycles and denials | MGMA and HFMA benchmarks |
| Transportation (brokered) | 30 to 45 days; factoring compresses to days | Broker terms and factoring advances | Industry surveys |
Third-party figures as published in 2026; ranges, not LedgerBPO prices or results.1
Our first-party dataset
This edition is built on published third-party data. The first anonymised LedgerBPO engagement dataset, aggregated across pods with a minimum cell size, is scheduled for the next edition and will be downloadable as CSV at /research/ar-days-benchmark-2026.csv with its own methodology note, collection period and sample size.
Methodology
- Fields per engagement: industry, market, AR by aging bucket at month-end, DSO, terms, share over 90 days, dispute share.
- Anonymisation: bands only; minimum five engagements per industry cell.
- Cadence: quarterly refresh; CSV carries a version and a date.
- Exclusions: engagements under three months old are excluded until the cadence has run a full cycle.
How to cite
LedgerBPO, AR Days Benchmark 2026, ledgerbpo.com/research/ar-days-benchmark/. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Please link to this page and keep the version date.
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