Tag Archive for: DPO

How can Cash Management improve your Cash Conversion Cycle part III

| 07-10-2016 | Olivier Werlingshoff |

credit-card-851502_960_720This week an article about the underestimation of cash management on LinkedIn caught my attention. 50% of the companies even doesn’t see the added value of a good cash flow forecast! This does not surprise me and therefore gave me a reason to pick up the pen and write another article on how to improve your cash conversion cycle!

In my two previous articles I gave some examples of how cash management could improve the DSO and the DIO but, what about the DPO? The DPO is an efficiency ratio that measures the average number of days a company takes to pay its suppliers. The more days, the better your cash conversion cycle will be.

Extend payment terms

The first action that can be taken is to extend your payment terms. In the payments barometer from Atradius of 2016 you can find an overview of all payment terms and average DSO for all countries in Western Europe. The reasons why payments are delayed are also mentioned.

The average given payment term to B2B customers in The Netherlands is 27 days, the average DSO is 42 days! Most of the time the first action that is taken when companies have liquidity problems is to extend their payments. The negative aspects of this action can be major. The first aspect is the impact this action has on your supplier, because he has to wait to receive his money. He will then have to look for alternative borrow possibilities. Besides the negative relationships, the extra costs will probably be include in his next price. Suppliers can also decide only to send you the goods when paid in advance.

As you can read this action can have a boomerang effect.

Reverse factoring

A possibility to extend your payment term without all negative effects is to use reverse factoring. With reverse factoring you give the possibility to your supplier to receive more favorable financial terms than they would have otherwise received for a loan.

The effect could be that the relationship between you and the supplier can be improved and you still can extend your payments.

Single payment solution

Another solution is to decrease your banking transfer time of a payment. If you have a lot of foreign suppliers, transfer times can easily be extended, especially when you need to use correspondent banks.

Using banks with an international presence as well as a single payment solution will facilitate you to follow your payment and use the fastest transfer method. By doing so, you can delay the moment of payment and still pay on time.

Within the EU you can make direct payments as a SEPA payment, because there are no borders anymore for money transfers. You don’t need local accounts anymore to facilitate and accelerate your payments.

 

Olivier Werlingshoff - editor treasuryXL

 

 

Olivier Werlingshoff

Owner of WERFIAD

 

How can Cash Management influence the Cash Conversion Cycle?

| 27-06-2016 | Olivier Werlingshoff |

credit-card-851502_960_720

How can the Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) be optimized? The CCC measures the time the money is tied up in the sales and the production process before it’s converted into a cash in from customers. When translated in a formula this will be the DSO + DIO – DPO (Day’s Sales Outstanding + Day’s Inventory Outstanding – Day’s Payables Outstanding).

In this article I will focus on the DSO. Strictly, the DSO is the time it takes for invoices to be paid. I prefer to enlarge this, to the moment you received the order from the customer till the moment the money is on your main bank account.

How can the “enlarged” DSO be shortened with cash management products?

Let’s look at the customer first, how would he prefer to pay?

Card payments:

In the retail sector 50% of the transactions are made by card (credit & debit cards). The other 50% of the transactions are still done by cash. Card transactions are a fast and easy way to receive the money on your bank account. With contactless cards you can even minimize the transaction time, if there is a bottle neck, you can increase your sales by accepting those cards!

The process with cash transactions is more extensive and expensive. You have to save and collect the cash before dropping it at your bank. After a few days the money will appear on your bank account.

Be aware that there are reasons why customers still prefer to make cash payments. Last year I set up a test of 6 weeks of not accepting cash in one retail shop. The total sales dropped with 15%!

Mail with payment link:

When you have the mail addresses from you customers you could consider to send the invoice the same day by mail with a link to the Ideal website. This will encourage your client to choose the payment method you prefer. Furthermore you will save postal costs and paper costs by not sending paper invoices.

Foreign countries:

If you have customers in foreign countries, be aware of the local habits. For example in the US, most of the payments are done by cheques. In the UK and in France cheques are still used as payment instrument. The problem with cheques is that when receiving them, they have to be send back to the original bank before the money will be transferred to your account.

To fasten this process you could consider the possibilities of a local cheque lockbox. With a lockbox your client can send his cheque directly to a local address at a bank and the transactions can be processed immediately. The time that will be saved is the “post time” and the “process time” of the cheque.

International transfer:

If you prefer your customer to make an international transfer, it can be an option to open a local bank account. Depending on the number and the amount of transactions this could save you a lot of transfer costs. To get the money from your local bank account on your main account in The Netherlands there are a lot of cash pool instruments you can use. Jan Meulendijks has written an article last week about how to include foreign bank accounts into your cash pool.

SEPA:

In de SEPA region there are no differences in transfer costs between a national transfer and a transfer between SEPA countries. It is seen as one SEPA region without borders. You can mention your main IBAN number on your invoices and ask your customers to transfer the money direct to your main account.

But even with SEPA it could be an idea to hold a local bank account. In some countries customers still prefer to make transfers to a “national” bank account instead of an IBAN in another country. Some local governments even still oblige you to hold a local bank account for tax payment purposes!

As you can read,besides a good credit management system, there are a lot of cash management instruments that can be used to fasten the payments of your customers.

Olivier Werlingshoff - editor treasuryXL

 

Olivier Werlingshoff

Owner of WERFIAD