Payment Timing Uncertainty Is Costing CFOs Billions
The biggest opportunity for chief financial officers (CFOs) isn’t adding another day to pay. It’s eliminating the uncertainty inside the days they already have. Today’s corporate working-capital playbook has become almost reflexive: shorten days sales outstanding (DSO), stretch days payable outstanding (DPO), squeeze inventory. Working-capital optimization, in this static sense, becomes a…
Chief financial officers (CFOs) are grappling with a significant issue: the uncertainty surrounding payment timing. The traditional approach of optimizing days sales outstanding (DSO), days payable outstanding (DPO), and inventory is flawed, as it fails to address the true cost of cash flow variance. When a company extends payment terms to its suppliers, it transfers a portion of the financing to them, and vice versa.
However, the actual availability of funds to the company remains uncertain, regardless of the contractual payment dates. This ambiguity leads to the unnecessary holding of liquidity, which could otherwise be deployed for other purposes. The difference between contractual cash timing and its actual economic availability, termed as Time to Cash™, is a critical metric that CFOs must consider.
By reducing this time uncertainty, companies can release liquidity, reduce borrowing costs, and improve overall cash flow efficiency. Many CFOs recognize the importance of improving the cash flow cycle as a key strategy, but the solution lies in enhancing payment infrastructure and reducing time to cash, rather than simply altering payment dates.
Written by urgent.news from PYMNTS's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
