Navigating the Economic Currents: What Invoice Data Reveals About Today’s B2B Landscape

Invoice patterns offer a window into the broader shifts shaping B2B commerce. From inflation and tariffs to payment terms and financing challenges, invoice data since 2020 tells a nuanced story of recovery, resilience, and divergence among businesses of different sizes. Understanding these patterns can help businesses across the supply chain strategically in challenging times.

Key Takeaways for Businesses 

Small businesses face increasing challenges:

While larger suppliers have maintained growth, small supplier sales in retail and wholesale have declined 15-20% since 2024.  Small businesses are experiencing tighter credit access with Fed rates at 5.25-5.50%, limiting growth potential compared to larger firms.  Early payment programs have become increasingly essential, with demand growing ~20% since 2021 as a critical liquidity source.

Market conditions are creating winners and losers:

Larger enterprises appear to be capturing market share from smaller competitors.  But payment terms are extending most dramatically for large suppliers (~15% increase), while remaining relatively stable for small businesses, offsetting some of the impact on costs.

Tariff uncertainty creates different impacts based on size:

Large enterprises likely made procurement adjustments in early 2025 to hedge against tariff announcements.  Large firms with long-term framework contracts have more insulation from short-term price swings while small and mid-market firms have been more exposed to ongoing spot-market volatility. 

Assessing Inflation Impact through Invoice Data

Understanding inflation’s patterns and impacts allows businesses to make more strategic decisions about pricing, inventory management, and working capital needs in this inflationary environment. The past few years have revealed dramatic shifts in invoice monetary values across business segments. Since January 2020, small and mid-market businesses have witnessed their average invoice monetary values surge by approximately 75%, with our index rising from 100 to around 175 today. This growth wasn’t smooth – a brief dip marked the acute uncertainty of Q2 2020 – but the recovery that followed proved both swift and substantial. 

However, the 75% increase in average invoice values isn’t just a number—it signals potential cash flow challenges as businesses need more working capital to fulfill orders.  These higher invoice values may mask unit sales declines, creating a false sense of business growth when in reality, businesses may be selling fewer items at higher prices. Evaluating a business’ sales performance at a more granular level will help them understand the precise reasons behind invoice fluctuations, while programs like C2FO’s Early Pay can help businesses ensure availability of working capital to fuel growth.

For most of this period, large enterprise suppliers moved in tandem with their smaller counterparts, corroborating the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that suggest inflation is up. The sharp producer price increases of 2021-2023, when US PPI rose over 20%, lifted all business segments simultaneously. However, since mid-2024, we’ve observed an interesting divergence, with large enterprise invoice size growth notably lagging behind other segments.  The recent divergence with larger businesses invoice values lagging behind smaller segments may signal that smaller, more agile competitors are better able to pass price increases onto buyers in the current environment. Understanding why large businesses’ invoice growth is underperforming relative to market trends is critical for strategic pricing decisions.

The 2025 Tariff Effect

Large enterprises, after moving in step in terms of invoice growth with smaller peers for years, began to lag in 2024—only to post a sudden jump between February and May 2025, when their invoice index climbed from 135 to 145, remaining elevated since. For large enterprises the sudden 7.4% jump in invoice values between February and May 2025 can signal that procurement teams are actively responding to tariff risks and looking to stockpile goods in anticipation of higher prices. This reactive purchasing strategy may be creating inventory bulges that may slow future sales for suppliers and impact financial performance through year-end. 

Meanwhile, small and mid-market firms also saw invoice values rise through 2024 and 2025 — but as a continuation of existing growth rather than a sudden jump. This divergence suggests differences in structural realities: large firms with long-term framework contracts may be more insulated from short-term price swings, while smaller suppliers may remain more exposed to spot-market volatility.  Understanding buying patterns helps suppliers distinguish between sustainable growth and temporary tariff-driven purchasing and can allow businesses to better manage production capacity and inventory levels.

This divergence isn’t merely an academic observation—it directly impacts cash flow planning (needing spikes of cash to meet buyer demand surges) , inventory strategy (stockpiling inputs that may be subject to changing tariffs), and pricing decisions (setting sales goals and pricing to reflect new cost structures). By recognizing these structural differences in how businesses respond to policy changes, businesses will be better positioned to navigate uncertain economic conditions.

Transaction Volume Disparities  

Perhaps the most telling story in our data concerns transaction volumes.  While all business segments experienced substantial growth from mid-2020 through 2023, this growth was decidedly unequal. The widening gap between large and small businesses, with larger enterprises doubling their 2020 baselines to 200, and small businesses, held back by tighter financing conditions and weaker purchasing power,  plateauing closer to an index level of 150 is driven by two key factors:

1. Access to credit: With Fed funds rates at 5.25–5.50% through 2023–2024, small businesses faced limited financing options, constraining their growth. Larger firms, with capital markets access and stronger cash positions, expanded more easily.
2. Market consolidation: Larger enterprises appear to be capturing market share from struggling smaller competitors, translating to sustained sales growth for large players while smaller businesses see stagnating transaction volumes. This emphasizes the importance of working capital for smaller businesses to be able to seize business opportunities when they arise and not be constrained by cash flow concerns.

Retail and Wholesale: A Sector Under Pressure

For suppliers in wholesale and retail trade, the story takes on additional complexity. These suppliers, regardless of business size, increased sales volumes in remarkable lockstep through early 2024, nearly doubling from pre-pandemic levels. However, since January 2024, small business supplier sales have declined notably and persistently – dropping from approximately 190 to 170 on our index, with trends suggesting continued deterioration.

This 15-20% decline in under two years is particularly striking given that their larger peers maintain elevated levels at an index close to 200. The implication is clear: smaller suppliers in consumer-facing industries are losing ground at an accelerating pace, with larger competitors consolidating strength.

Early Pay^TM: A Critical Lifeline for Small Businesses

For small businesses, early payment demand remains both persistent and essential, highlighting the ongoing importance of flexible, affordable financing tools for businesses that would otherwise face prohibitive borrowing costs.  

This reliance has seen demand for early payment grow approximately 20% since 2021, making small suppliers the most consistent users of early payment on our platform. Unlike larger peers, who often treat early payment as tactical, smaller businesses depend on it for day-to-day liquidity, especially with credit markets still tight. 

Payment Terms: The Longer Wait

The evolution of payment terms across different business segments reveals critical insights that directly impact financial strategy and competitive positioning and a complex landscape of financial power and vulnerability.

Large enterprises, starting from the shortest relative payment terms in 2018, have seen the most dramatic extension, with terms increasing by about 15% from pre-pandemic levels. Mid-market suppliers experienced a similar sharp extension during COVID, with terms moderating slightly in 2023 before climbing back toward index levels of 110-111 currently.

Interestingly, small suppliers have maintained relative stability. While they too saw modest increases during the pandemic, by late 2023 their payment receipt periods had largely reverted to pre-COVID levels. This relative stability for small suppliers likely stems from practical considerations – significantly extended payment cycles could severely impair smaller companies’ ability to operate given their limited access to reasonably priced alternative financing.

Understanding these broader trends can help businesses contextualize their experiences and make more informed decisions about working capital strategy. Whether operating as a small business feeling the squeeze of tightening market conditions or functioning as a larger enterprise navigating changing payment terms, access to working capital remains a crucial competitive advantage in today’s economic environment.

What This Means for Businesses

These trends highlight the importance of data insights, financial flexibility and early payment options in today’s economic environment. 

The imprint of inflation and tariffs on invoices underscores two enduring truths:

• Macroeconomic forces matter: Changes in invoice values and volumes can reflect broad market trends, not just individual company performance.

• Size matters: Large and mid-market suppliers are seemingly capturing growth and absorbing shocks differently than small suppliers, who seem to remain more vulnerable but also more engaged in early payment programs.

To learn more about C2FO data and customized insights we can provide, please email [email protected]