  Technical advances enabled real-time data collection at a large scale, but
lacking standards hamper their economic interpretation. Here, we benchmark a
new monthly time series of inter-industrial flows of funds, constructed from
aggregated and anonymised real-time payments between UK businesses, covering
5-digit SIC codes industries for the period 08/2015 to 12/2023, against
established economic indicators, including GDP, input-output tables (IOTs), and
stylised facts of granular firm- and industry-level production networks. We
supplement the quantitative analyses with conceptual discussions, explaining
the caveats of bottom-up collected payment data and their differences to
national account tables. The results reveal strong GDP correlations, some
qualitative consistency with official IOTs and stylised facts. We guide on the
interpretation of the data and areas that require special attention for
reliable quantitative research.
