What Waiting Costs · AFSA & Helpline Figures
If you trade as a sole trader or in a partnership, every business debt is already your personal debt. Nothing stands between those debts and your home, and there is no restructuring scheme to fall back on. The only thing you control is how early you act, and the official figures below show what waiting costs.
Business owners rarely lose everything because the problem could not be fixed. They lose it because help came after the bank or a secured creditor had already decided. BusinessSolvency exists to show you the shortfall while it can still be fixed on your terms.
Business owners report weak help-seeking habits, held back by time, cost and the demands of running the business. Insolvency carries a stigma that makes many delay until it is too late to restructure.5
Median liability in a business-related bankruptcy, 2024–25. 88.2% of business-related personal insolvencies ended in bankruptcy, against 43.7% for everyone else.2
of Small Business Debt Helpline cases in 2025–26 were tied to a change in the owner’s personal life, such as a relationship breakdown, illness or accident.3
The same shortfall can be dealt with at any of these points. The bars are drawn to scale.
Small Business Debt Helpline, or a free financial counsellor. Options are still wide open because cash is still there.
The typical cost of professional advice for a small business, as reported in ARITA’s survey for the Treasury review.1
Median liability in a business-related bankruptcy in 2024–25. 88.2% of business-related personal insolvencies ended in bankruptcy, compared with 43.7% for everyone else.2
Business-related cases were 28.8% of new personal insolvencies in 2024–25, but carried 78.8% of the money owed, a total of $5.2 billion.2 The reason is structural. A sole trader or partner is personally liable for every supplier account, loan and tax debt the business takes on, and partners can be pursued for each other’s share.
There is no formal restructuring scheme you can use to buy time. That makes early warning the only protection you actually have.
Enter rough figures. Nothing is sent anywhere; the sums run in your browser.
This is an illustration built from averages, not financial or legal advice. Your own position depends on the documents you have signed and the debts you hold. Talk to your accountant about your circumstances.
Accountants see it constantly: the owner who is working harder than ever, juggling creditors every week, with no time or money left for help. The research explains why this happens to capable people.
Money pressure narrows the mind onto this week’s bills. Longer-range decisions, like getting advice, fall outside the frame, and borrowing to meet today’s emergency starts to feel like the only move.4
Studies of people under financial strain find that avoidance and money trouble grow together. People stop opening statements and put off decisions, unless they can see a step that will actually help.4
Business owners report weak help-seeking habits, held back by time, cost and the demands of running the business.5 Insolvency carries a stigma that makes many people delay until it is too late to restructure.
Closure rarely happens because the owner gives up. It happens when creditors and lenders stop waiting. By the time a bank or secured creditor forces the issue, the choices that were there months earlier have usually gone.
And the cost is not only financial. 64% of the Small Business Debt Helpline’s cases in 2025–26 were tied to a change in the owner’s personal life, such as a relationship breakdown, illness or accident.3
Where owners get help early, outcomes are markedly better. Denmark has run a free early-warning service for struggling small businesses since 2007, and reports that around half of the more than 5,500 firms it has helped have survived.
The step that matters is small: see the numbers early, and make one phone call while there is still cash to work with. That is what BusinessSolvency is built for. It checks every quarter whether cash coming in covers everything going out, and flags the gap long before a creditor does.
BusinessSolvency checks one test every quarter: does all cash in equal or exceed all cash out? When it doesn’t, you know, and you know early.
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