Debtor days calculation
/What is the Debtor Days Calculation?
Debtor days is the average number of days required for a company to receive payments from its customers. A larger number of debtor days means that a business must invest more cash in its unpaid accounts receivable asset, while a smaller number implies that there is a smaller investment in accounts receivable, and that therefore more cash is being made available for other uses. The size of the debtor days experienced by a company is driven by a number of factors, including the items noted below.
Industry Practice
Customers may be accustomed to paying after a certain number of days, irrespective of what the seller demands as its payment terms. This is especially common when customers are quite large.
Early Payment Discounts
A company may offer substantial discounts in exchange for early payment, in which case the cost of the discounts must be considered.
Billing Errors
If a company issues incorrect invoices, it can take a substantial amount of time to correct these billing errors and be paid.
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Credit Practices
If the credit department issues excessive credit to customers who are clearly unable to pay, this will increase the number of debtor days, as well as lead to more bad debt write-offs.
Investment in Collections Staff
The amount of money, training time, and technology aids invested in the collections staff correlates closely to the amount of cash collected in a timely manner.
How to Calculate Debtor Days
The calculation of debtor days is to divide trade receivables by annual credit sales, and then multiply the result by 365 days. The formula is as follows:
(Trade receivables ÷ Annual credit sales) x 365 days = Debtor days
The number of debtor days should be compared to that of other companies in the same industry to see if it is unusually high or low. Alternatively, the measure can be compared to benchmark companies located outside of the industry to obtain the highest possible target figures to set as goals.
Example of Debtor Days
For example, if a company has average trade receivables of $5,000,000 and its annual credit sales are $30,000,000, then its debtor days is 61 days. The calculation is:
($5,000,000 Trade receivables ÷ $30,000,000 Annual credit sales) x 365 = 60.83 Debtor days
Terms Similar to Debtor Days
Debtor days is also known as the debtor collection period.