Average Collection Period: What Is It?

In that case, the formula for the average collection period should be adjusted as per necessity. First, a huge percentage of the company’s cash flow depends on the collection period.

Your entire team can access your customers’ entire payment history, giving you a clear picture of your collection efforts. Instead of having to remind your customers to pay with dunning letters and phone calls, you can deliver automated reminders before and after an invoice is due. In Versapay, you can segment customer accounts send personalized messages prompting your customers to remit payments on average collection period formula time. With this approach, you can better prevent accounts becoming delinquent. With an accounts receivable automation solution, you can automate tedious, time-consuming manual tasks within your AR workflow. For instance, with Versapay you can automatically send invoices once they’re generated in your ERP, getting them in your customers hands sooner and reducing the likelihood of invoice errors.

Accounts Receivable Process Flow Chart: A Guide to Optimizing the AR Cycle

These types of payments are considered accounts receivable because a business is waiting to receive these payments on an account. Accounts receivable are an asset, or something a business owns or is owed. There are plenty of metrics to choose from, of course, so you must select those you measure wisely. The average collection period is closely related to the accounts turnover ratio, which is calculated by dividing total net sales by the average AR balance. The collection period is the time that it takes for a business to convert balances from accounts receivable back into cash flow.

A decreasing Average Collection Period generally indicates the company is increasingly able to reduce the time it takes to collect on its credit extended to customers. When assessing whether your average collection period is “good” or “bad” it’s important to take into account the number of days outlined in your credit terms.

Looking to automate your payables and receivables?

Unless you run a finance-based business, accessing their financial statements is not possible for you. Yet, with the calculation of average collection period, you can predict and understand their creditworthiness. Finance professionals weigh multiple factors to determine the average performance of their company. One of the important factors that highlight turnover and cash flow management is the average collection period. The average collection period is the average amount of time it takes a business to receive payment for accounts receivable. The average collection period also reveals information about the company’s credit policies.

• Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, but it can be hard to manage when you’re in the midst of a cash flow crisis.
• If a company consistently has high ACP, there is a problem with its accounts receivable and collection process.
• The largest in-person UnConference for the office of the CFO is back in Atlanta.
• Keeping a business cash reserve can also help you manage your expenses without having to get a loan or stacking up credit card debt when customer payments are delayed.
• You can calculate the average accounts receivable over the period by totaling the accounts receivable at the beginning of the period and the end of the period, then divide that by 2.

Lower ratios mean faster average collection periods, indicating efficient management. You can understand how much cash flow is pending or readily available by monitoring your average collection period. Measuring this performance metric also provides insights into how efficiently your accounts receivable department is operating. An average collection period of 30 days for a company indicates that customers purchasing products or services on credit take around 30 days to clear pending accounts receivable.

Other Ways to Calculate Your Average Collection Period Ratio

Although cash on hand is important to every business, some rely more on their cash flow than others. This is important because a credit sale is not fully completed until the company has been paid. Until cash has been collected, a company is yet to reap the full benefit of the transaction. A low average collection period indicates that an organization collects payments faster. In general, you want to keep your average collection period or DSO under 45 days. Monitoring your average collection period regularly can help you spot problem accounts before they become uncollectible. Liquidity is your business’s ability to convert assets into cash to pay your short-term liabilities or debts.

This value is based on how quickly you collect payments from your customers. Average collection period analysis can throw light on many takeaways that will help you understand your company more. Understanding how long it takes a business to recoup the money it invests on inventory and raw materials is crucial in determining the length of its cash cycle. The cash cycle tracks how many days it takes the company to get its money back since the moment it places a purchase order until the moment it collects the money from a sale. In some years, the company will have more time to collect on that debt, and in other years it might be less. This way, companies can use this formula to determine how many days they have until they need to start charging interest on unpaid debts. Because the amount of time a company has to collect on debt changes yearly, the average collection period is a crucial calculation to help you determine how long debt collection typically takes.