There are many reasons a business owner may want to understand the average collection period meaning, calculation, and analysis. Not only does the ACP value provide important insights into the company’s short-term liquidity and the efficiency of its collection processes, but it can even be used to catch early signs of bad allowances. Most importantly, the ACP is not difficult to calculate, with all the necessary information readily available on a company’s balance sheet and income statement. Typically, lower collection periods are preferred, as the shorter duration indicates more efficiency in credit collections.

How to reduce receivables collection period?

🔎 You can also enter your terms of credit in our calculator to compare them with your average collection period. In a business where sales are steady and the customer mix is unchanging, it should be quite consistent from period to period. Conversely, when sales or the mix of customers is changing dramatically, this measure can be expected to vary substantially over time.

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 article aims to delve into the concept of the receivables collection period, its calculation, interpretation, and analysis while providing insights into the ultimate guide to crowdfunding for nonprofits optimising this vital aspect of cash flow management. The ACP value could also decrease if a company has imposed shorter payment deadlines and tightened its credit policies. A decreasing average collection period is generally the trend companies like to see.

1. Law firms, for example, reportedly saw an overall increase of 5% in the average collection cycle in 2023.
2. In general, a higher receivable turnover is better because it means customers pay their invoices on time.
3. Analysing and managing the receivables collection period is essential for maintaining a healthy financial position and optimising cash flow.
4. The average collection period is calculated by dividing the net credit sales by the average accounts receivable, which gives the Accounts receivable turnover ratio.

What Is the Average Collection Period Formula?

In the following example of the average collection period calculation, we’ll use two different methods. GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices. Here, we’ll take a closer look at the average collection period, how to calculate it and more. Any company facing decrease in average collection period should take appropriate actions to resolve with a view to increasing orders to become more profitable. Integrating best practices into the collections department and team can help to improve collection efficiency. COVID-19 has further highlighted the importance of the average collection period.

Average collection period formula

The average collection period is the average number of days it takes to collect payments from your customers. This metric tells you how long it takes to get paid by customers, and it can help ensure you have enough cash flow to pay employees, make loan payments, https://www.simple-accounting.org/ and pay other expenses. It may mean that your business isn’t efficient enough when it comes to staying on top of collecting its accounts receivable. However, it can also show that your credit policy is one that offers more flexible credit terms.

They could also consider reviewing their credit policies and offering incentives to encourage faster payments. Consider a small graphic design business that offers design services to clients on credit. They want to determine the average time it takes to collect payments from their clients.

A more extended average collection period also increases the chances of growing customer debt or accounts receivable (AR) going unpaid. Plus, the impact is greater for professional service companies, as you don’t have physical assets or products to fall back on to recuperate those losses. The average collection period signifies the average duration a business requires to collect payments owed by clients or customers. Vigilantly tracking this metric is essential to maintain sufficient cash flow for meeting immediate financial obligations.

Efficient cash flow management is important for any business’s financial stability and growth. One crucial aspect that can impede cash flow efficiency is a lengthy receivables collection period. When customers take longer than anticipated to settle their invoices, it can strain liquidity and hinder the ability to meet financial obligations. Finally, to find the value of the average collection period, you will need to divide the average AR value by total net credit sales and multiply the result by the number of days in a year. For example, financial institutions, i.e., banks, rely on accounts receivable because they offer their customers credit loans, installments, and mortgages.

In that case, ABC may wish to consider loosening its credit policy to offer a more flexible payment term. Yes, any business that extends credit to its customers can benefit from using this calculator to monitor and manage its accounts receivables effectively. A lower collection period typically indicates efficient accounts receivable management, meaning the company is quickly converting credit sales into cash.

By automating their AR process with HighRadius Autonomous Receivables, businesses can significantly improve their order to cash cycle. By benchmarking against the industry standard, a company can gauge easily whether the number is acceptable or if there is potential for improvement. We’ll use the ending A/R balance for our calculations here and assume the number of days in the period is 365 days. It’s easy to think that the only thing that matters about invoices is that they get paid, but actually, the time required for each invoice to be fulfilled is also crucial. While you may state on the invoice itself that you expect them to be paid in a certain timeframe – say, three weeks – the reality might be vastly different, for better or worse. We’ll show you how to analyse your average collection period a little later on in this post.