Chapter 15

Working Capital
and Current
Assets
Management

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All rights reserved.
 Learning Goals

LG1 Understand working capital management, net working capital,

and the related trade-off between profitability and risk.

LG2 Describe the cash conversion cycle, its funding requirements,

and the key strategies for managing it.

LG3 Discuss inventory management: differing views, common

techniques, and international concerns.

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 Learning Goals (cont.)

LG4 Explain the credit selection process and the quantitative

procedure for evaluating changes in credit standards.

LG5 Review the procedures for quantitatively considering cash

discount changes, other aspects of credit terms, and credit
monitoring.

LG6 Understand the management of receipts and disbursements,

including float, speeding up collections, slowing down
payments, cash concentration, zero-balance accounts, and
investing in marketable securities.

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 Net Working Capital Fundamentals:
Working Capital Management
Working capital (or short-term financial) management is the
management of current assets and current liabilities.
– Current assets include inventory, accounts receivable, marketable securities,
and cash
– Current liabilities include notes payable, accruals, and accounts payable
– Firms are able to reduce financing costs or increase the funds available for
expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in working capital

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 Matter of Fact

CFOs Value Working Capital Management

– A survey of CFOs from firms around the world suggests that working capital
management is a top the list of most valued finance functions.
– Among 19 different finance functions, CFOs surveyed viewed working
capital management as equally important as capital structure, debt issuance
and management, bank relationships, and tax management.
– CFOs viewed the performance of working capital management as only being
better than the performance of pension management.
– Consistent with their view that working capital management is a high value
but low satisfaction activity, it was identified as the finance function second
most in need of additional resources.

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 Net Working Capital Fundamentals:
Net Working Capital
• Working capital refers to current assets, which represent the
portion of investment that circulates from one form to another in
the ordinary conduct of business.
• Net working capital is the difference between the firm’s current
assets and its current liabilities; can be positive or negative.

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 Net Working Capital Fundamentals:
Trade-off between Profitability and Risk

• Profitability is the relationship between revenues and costs

generated by using the firm’s assets—both current and fixed—in
productive activities.
– A firm can increase its profits by (1) increasing revenues or (2) decreasing
costs.
• Risk (of insolvency) is the probability that a firm will be unable to
pay its bills as they come due.
• Insolvent describes a firm that is unable to pay its bills as they
come due.

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 Cash Conversion Cycle

The cash conversion cycle (CCC) is the length of time

required for a company to convert cash invested in its
operations to cash received as a result of its operations.

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 Cash Conversion Cycle:
Calculating the Cash Conversion Cycle

• A firm’s operating cycle (OC) is the time from the

beginning of the production process to collection of cash
from the sale of the finished product.
• It is measured in elapsed time by summing the average
age of inventory (AAI) and the average collection period
(ACP).
OC = AAI + ACP

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 Matter of Fact

Increasing speed lowers working capital

– A firm can lower its working capital if it can speed up its
operating cycle.
– For example, if a firm accepts bank credit (like a Visa card), it
will receive cash sooner after the sale is transacted than if it has
to wait until the customer pays its accounts receivable.

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 Cash Conversion Cycle:
Calculating the Cash Conversion Cycle

• However, the process of producing and selling a product

also includes the purchase of production inputs (raw
materials) on account, which results in accounts payable.
• The time it takes to pay the accounts payable, measured in
days, is the average payment period (APP). The operating
cycle less the average payment period yields the cash
conversion cycle. The formula for the cash conversion
cycle is:
CCC = OC – APP

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 Cash Conversion Cycle:
Calculating the Cash Conversion Cycle

Substituting for OC, we can see that the cash conversion

cycle has three main components, as shown in the following
equation: (1) average age of the inventory, (2) average
collection period, and (3) average payment period.
CCC = AAI + ACP – APP

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 Figure 15.2 Timeline for IBM’s
Cash Conversion Cycle

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 Cash Conversion Cycle: Funding Requirements
of the Cash Conversion Cycle

A permanent funding requirement is a constant

investment in operating assets resulting from constant sales
over time.
A seasonal funding requirement is an investment in
operating assets that varies over time as a result of cyclic
sales.

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 Figure 15.3 Semper Pump Company’s
Total Funding Requirements

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 Cash Conversion Cycle: Aggressive versus
Conservative Seasonal Funding Strategies

An aggressive funding strategy is a funding strategy under

which the firm funds its seasonal requirements with short-
term debt and its permanent requirements with long-term
debt.
A conservative funding strategy is a funding strategy
under which the firm funds both its seasonal and its
permanent requirements with long-term debt.

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 Cash Conversion Cycle: Aggressive versus
Conservative Seasonal Funding Strategies

Semper Pump Company has a permanent funding requirement of

$135,000 in operating assets and seasonal funding requirements that
vary between $0 and $990,000 and average $101,250. If Semper can
borrow short-term funds at 6.25% and long-term funds at 8%, and if it
can earn 5% on the investment of any surplus balances, then the
annual cost of an aggressive strategy for seasonal funding will be:

Cost of short-term financing = 0.0625  $101,250 = $  6,328.13

+ Cost of long-term financing = 0.0800  135,000 = 10,800.00
– Earnings on surplus balances = 0.0500  0 = 0
Total cost of aggressive = $17,128.13
strategy

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 Cash Conversion Cycle: Aggressive versus
Conservative Seasonal Funding Strategies

Alternatively, Semper can choose a conservative strategy,

under which surplus cash balances are fully invested. (In
Figure 15.3, this surplus will be the difference between the
peak need of $1,125,000 and the total need, which varies
between $135,000 and $1,125,000 during the year.) The cost
of the conservative strategy will be:

Cost of short-term financing = 0.0625  $ 0 = $  0

+ Cost of long-term financing = 0.0800  1,125,000 = 90,000.00
– Earnings on surplus balances = 0.0500  888,750 = 44,437.50
Total cost of conservative strategy = $45,562.50

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 Cash Conversion Cycle: Strategies for
Managing the Cash Conversion Cycle

The goal is to minimize the length of the cash conversion cycle, which
minimizes negotiated liabilities. This goal can be realized through use
of the following strategies:
1. Turn over inventory as quickly as possible without stockouts that result in
sales.
2. Collect accounts receivable as quickly as possible without losing sales from
high-pressure collection techniques.
3. Manage mail, processing, and clearing time to reduce them when collecting
from customers and to increase them when paying suppliers.
4. Pay accounts payable as slowly as possible without damaging the firm’s
credit rating.

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 Inventory Management

Differing viewpoints about appropriate inventory levels commonly

exist among a firm’s finance, marketing, manufacturing, and
purchasing managers.
– The financial manager’s general disposition toward inventory levels is to
keep them low, to ensure that the firm’s money is not being unwisely
invested in excess resources.
– The marketing manager, on the other hand, would like to have large
inventories of the firm’s finished products.
– The manufacturing manager’s major responsibility is to implement the
production plan so that it results in the desired amount of finished goods of
acceptable quality available on time at a low cost.
– The purchasing manager is concerned solely with the raw materials
inventories.

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 Inventory Management: Common
Techniques for Managing Inventory
The ABC inventory system is an inventory management technique
that divides inventory into three groups—A, B, and C, in descending
order of importance and level of monitoring, on the basis of the dollar
investment in each.
– The A group includes those items with the largest dollar investment.
Typically, this group consists of 20 percent of the firm’s inventory items but
80 percent of its investment in inventory.
– The B group consists of items that account for the next largest investment in
inventory.
– The C group consists of a large number of items that require a relatively
small investment.

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

The inventory group of each item determines the item’s level of

monitoring.
– The A group items receive the most intense monitoring because of the high
dollar investment. Typically, A group items are tracked on a perpetual
inventory system that allows daily verification of each item’s inventory level.
– B group items are frequently controlled through periodic, perhaps weekly,
checking of their levels.
– C group items are monitored with unsophisticated techniques, such as the
two-bin method; an unsophisticated inventory-monitoring technique that
involves reordering inventory when one of two bins is empty.

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

The large dollar investment in A and B group items suggests the need
for a better method of inventory management than the ABC system.

The Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) Model is an inventory

management technique for determining an item’s optimal order size,
which is the size that minimizes the total of its order costs and
carrying costs.
– The EOQ model is an appropriate model for the management of A and B
group items.

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

EOQ assumes that the relevant costs of inventory can be divided into
order costs and carrying costs.
– Order costs are the fixed clerical costs of placing and receiving an inventory
order.
– Carrying costs are the variable costs per unit of holding an item in inventory
for a specific period of time.
The EOQ model analyzes the tradeoff between order costs and
carrying costs to determine the order quantity that minimizes the total
inventory cost.

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

A formula can be developed for determining the firm’s EOQ for a

given inventory item, where
S = usage in units per period
O = order cost per order
C = carrying cost per unit per period
Q = order quantity in units
The order cost can be expressed as the product of the cost per order
and the number of orders. Because the number of orders equals the
usage during the period divided by the order quantity (S/Q), the order
cost can be expressed as follows:
Order cost = O  S/Q

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

The carrying cost is defined as the cost of carrying a unit of inventory

per period multiplied by the firm’s average inventory. The average
inventory is the order quantity divided by 2 (Q/2), because inventory
is assumed to be depleted at a constant rate. Thus carrying cost can be
expressed as follows:
Carrying cost = C  Q/2
The firm’s total cost of inventory is found by summing the order cost
and the carrying cost. Thus the total cost function is
Total cost = (O  S/Q) + (C  Q/2)

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

Because the EOQ is defined as the order quantity that

minimizes the total cost function, we must solve the total
cost function for the EOQ. The resulting equation is

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

MAX Company, a producer of dinnerware, has an A group inventory

item that is vital to the production process. This item costs $1,500, and
MAX uses 1,100 units of the item per year. MAX wants to determine
its optimal order strategy for the item. To calculate the EOQ, we need
the following inputs:
– Order cost per order = $150
– Carrying cost per unit per year = $200
– Thus,

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

The reorder point is the point at which to reorder

inventory, expressed as days of lead time  daily usage.

Because lead times and usage rates are not precise, most
firms hold safety stock—extra inventory that is held to
prevent stockouts of important items.

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

The reorder point for MAX depends on the number of days MAX
operates per year.
– Assuming that MAX operates 250 days per year and uses 1,100 units of this
item, its daily usage is 4.4 units (1,100 ÷ 250).
– If its lead time is 2 days and MAX wants to maintain a safety stock of 4
units, the reorder point for this item is 12.8 units [(2  4.4) + 4].
– However, orders are made only in whole units, so the order is placed when
the inventory falls to 13 units.

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 Inventory Management: Common Techniques
for Managing Inventory (cont.)

A just-in-time (JIT) system is an inventory management technique

that minimizes inventory investment by having materials arrive at
exactly the time they are needed for production.
– Because its objective is to minimize inventory investment, a JIT system uses
no (or very little) safety stock.
– Extensive coordination among the firm’s employees, its suppliers, and
shipping companies must exist to ensure that material inputs arrive on time.
– Failure of materials to arrive on time results in a shutdown of the production
line until the materials arrive.
– Likewise, a JIT system requires high-quality parts from suppliers.

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 Focus on Practice

RFID: The Wave of the Future

– Wal-Mart expects the RFID technology to improve its inventory
management, and it remains committed to advancing its use of
RFID.
– Wal-Mart will then share the benefits and best practices with its
suppliers, which might want to achieve the same benefits from
the technology.
– What problem might occur with the full implementation of
RFID technology in retail industries? Specifically, consider the
amount of data that might be collected.

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 Inventory Management: Computerized
Systems for Resource Control

A materials requirement planning (MRP) system is an inventory

management technique that applies EOQ concepts and a computer to
compare production needs to available inventory balances and
determine when orders should be placed for various items on a
product’s bill of materials.
Manufacturing resource planning II (MRP II) is a sophisticated
computerized system that integrates data from numerous areas such as
finance, accounting, marketing, engineering, and manufacturing and
generates production plans as well as numerous financial and
management reports.

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 Inventory Management: Computerized
Systems for Resource Control (cont.)

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a computerized

system that electronically integrates external information
about the firm’s suppliers and customers with the firm’s
departmental data so that information on all available
resources—human and material—can be instantly obtained
in a fashion that eliminates production delays and controls
costs.

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 Accounts Receivable
Management
The second component of the cash conversion cycle is the average
collection period. The average collection period has two parts:
1. The time from the sale until the customer mails the payment.
2. The time from when the payment is mailed until the firm has the collected
funds in its bank account.

The objective for managing accounts receivable is to collect accounts

receivable as quickly as possible without losing sales from high-
pressure collection techniques. Accomplishing this goal encompasses
three topics: (1) credit selection and standards, (2) credit terms, and
(3) credit monitoring.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Selection and Standards
Credit standards are a firm’s minimum requirements for extending
credit to a customer.
The five C’s of credit are as follows:
1. Character: The applicant’s record of meeting past obligations.
2. Capacity: The applicant’s ability to repay the requested credit.
3. Capital: The applicant’s debt relative to equity.
4. Collateral: The amount of assets the applicant has available for use in
securing the credit.
5. Conditions: Current general and industry-specific economic conditions,
and any unique conditions surrounding a specific transaction.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Selection and Standards (cont.)

Credit scoring is a credit selection method commonly used

with high-volume/small-dollar credit requests; relies on a
credit score determined by applying statistically derived
weights to a credit applicant’s scores on key financial and
credit characteristics.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Selection and Standards (cont.)

The firm sometimes will contemplate changing its credit

standards in an effort to improve its returns and create
greater value for its owners. To demonstrate, consider the
following changes and effects on profits expected to result
from the relaxation of credit standards.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Selection and Standards (cont.)

To determine the cost of the marginal investment in accounts

receivable, Dodd must find the difference between the cost of carrying
receivables under the two credit standards. Because its concern is only
with the out-of-pocket costs, the relevant cost is the variable cost. The
average investment in accounts receivable can be calculated by using
the following formula:

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Selection and Standards (cont.)

Credit management is difficult enough for managers of

purely domestic companies, and these tasks become much
more complex for companies that operate internationally.
– This is partly because international operations typically expose a
firm to exchange rate risk.
– It is also due to the dangers and delays involved in shipping
goods long distances and in having to cross at least two
international borders.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Terms
Credit terms are the terms of sale for customers who have
been extended credit by the firm.
A cash discount is a percentage deduction from the
purchase price; available to the credit customer who pays its
account within a specified time.
– For example, terms of 2/10 net 30 mean the customer can take a
2 percent discount from the invoice amount if the payment is
made within 10 days of the beginning of the credit period or can
pay the full amount of the invoice within 30 days.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Terms (cont.)
A cash discount period is the number of days after the
beginning of the credit period during which the cash
discount is available.
The net effect of changes in this period is difficult to analyze
because of the nature of the forces involved.
– For example, if a firm were to increase its cash discount period
by 10 days (for example, changing its credit terms from 2/10 net
30 to 2/20 net 30), the following changes would be expected to
occur: (1) Sales would increase, positively affecting profit. (2)
Bad-debt expenses would decrease, positively affecting profit.
(3) The profit per unit would decrease as a result of more people
taking the discount, negatively affecting profit.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Terms (cont.)
The credit period is the number of days after the beginning
of the credit period until full payment of the account is due.
Changes in the credit period, the number of days after the
beginning of the credit period until full payment of the
account is due, also affect a firm’s profitability.
– For example, increasing a firm’s credit period from net 30 days
to net 45 days should increase sales, positively affecting profit.
But both the investment in accounts receivable and bad-debt
expenses would also increase, negatively affecting profit.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Terms (cont.)
Credit monitoring is the ongoing review of a firm’s
accounts receivable to determine whether customers are
paying according to the stated credit terms.
– If they are not paying in a timely manner, credit monitoring will
alert the firm to the problem.
– Slow payments are costly to a firm because they lengthen the
average collection period and thus increase the firm’s
investment in accounts receivable.
– Two frequently used techniques for credit monitoring are
average collection period and aging of accounts receivable.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Terms (cont.)
The average collection period has two components: (1) the
time from sale until the customer places the payment in the
mail and (2) the time to receive, process, and collect the
payment once it has been mailed by the customer. The
formula for finding the average collection period is:

Assuming receipt, processing, and collection time is

constant, the average collection period tells the firm, on
average, when its customers pay their accounts.

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 Accounts Receivable Management:
Credit Terms (cont.)
An aging schedule is a credit-monitoring technique that
breaks down accounts receivable into groups on the basis of
their time of origin; it indicates the percentages of the total
accounts receivable balance that have been outstanding for
specified periods of time.

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 Table 15.4
Popular Collection Techniques

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 Management of Receipts and
Disbursements: Float
Float refers to funds that have been sent by the payer but are
not yet usable funds to the payee. Float has three component
parts:
1. Mail float is the time delay between when payment is placed
in the mail and when it is received.
2. Processing float is the time between receipt of a payment and
its deposit into the firm’s account.
3. Clearing float is the time between deposit of a payment and
when spendable funds become available to the firm.

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 Management of Receipts and
Disbursements: Speeding Up Collections

Speeding up collections reduces customer collection float

time and thus reduces the firm’s average collection period,
which reduces the investment the firm must make in its cash
conversion cycle.
A popular technique for speeding up collections is a
lockbox system, which is a collection procedure in which
customers mail payments to a post office box that is emptied
regularly by the firm’s bank, which processes the payments
and deposits them in the firm’s account. This system speeds
up collection time by reducing processing time as well as
mail and clearing time.

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 Management of Receipts and Disbursements:
Slowing Down Payments

Float is also a component of the firm’s average payment

period.
Controlled disbursing is the strategic use of mailing points
and bank accounts to lengthen mail float and clearing float,
respectively.

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 Focus on Ethics

Stretching Accounts Payable—Is It a Good Policy?

– There are two negative ramifications of stretching accounts payables (A/P).
• First, the stretching out of payables can be pushed too far, and a business can get
tagged as a slow-payer. Vendors will eventually put increasing pressure on the
company to make more timely payments.
• Stretching accounts payables also raises ethical issues. First, it may cause the
firm to violate the agreement it entered with its supplier when it purchased the
merchandise. More important to investors, the firm may stretch A/P to artificially
boost reported operating cash flow during a reporting period. In other words,
firms can improve reported operating cash flows due solely to a decision to slow
the payment rate to vendors.
– While vendor discounts for early payment are very rewarding, what are some
of the difficulties that may arise to keep a firm from taking advantage of
those discounts?

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 Management of Receipts and
Disbursements: Cash Concentration

Cash concentration is the process used by the firm to bring lockbox

and other deposits together into one bank, often called the
concentration bank. Cash concentration has three main advantages.
1. First, it creates a large pool of funds for use in making short-term cash
investments. Because there is a fixed-cost component in the transaction
cost associated with such investments, investing a single pool of funds
reduces the firm’s transaction costs. The larger investment pool also allows
the firm to choose from a greater variety of short-term investment vehicles.
2. Second, concentrating the firm’s cash in one account improves the tracking
and internal control of the firm’s cash.
3. Third, having one concentration bank enables the firm to implement
payment strategies that reduce idle cash balances.

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 Management of Receipts and Disbursements:
Cash Concentration (cont.)

A depository transfer check (DTC) is an unsigned check drawn on

one of a firm’s bank accounts and deposited in another.
An ACH (automated clearinghouse) transfer is a preauthorized
electronic withdrawal from the payer’s account and deposit into the
payee’s account via a settlement among banks by the automated
clearinghouse, or ACH.
A wire transfer is an electronic communication that, via bookkeeping
entries, removes funds from the payer’s bank and deposits them in the
payee’s bank.

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 Management of Receipts and
Disbursements: Zero-Balance Accounts

A zero-balance account (ZBA) is a disbursement account that always

has an end-of-day balance of zero because the firm deposits money to
cover checks drawn on the account only as they are presented for
payment each day.

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 Personal Finance Example

Megan Laurie, a 25-year-old nurse, works at a hospital that

pays her every 2 weeks by direct deposit into her checking
account, which pays no interest and has no minimum
balance requirement. She takes home about $1,800 every 2
weeks—or about $3,600 per month. She maintains a
checking account balance of around $1,500. Whenever it
exceeds that amount she transfers the excess into her savings
account, which currently pays 1.5% annual interest. She
currently has a savings account balance of $17,000 and
estimates that she transfers about $600 per month from her
checking account into her savings account.

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 Personal Finance Example
(cont.)
Megan pays her bills immediately when she receives them.
Her monthly bills average about $1,900, and her monthly
cash outlays for food and gas total about $900. An analysis
of Megan’s bill payments indicates that on average she pays
her bills 8 days early. Most marketable securities are
currently yielding about 4.2% annual interest. Megan is
interested in learning how she might better manage her cash
balances.

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 Personal Finance Example
(cont.)
Megan talks with her sister, who has had a finance course,
and they come up with three ways for Megan to better
manage her cash balance:
1. Invest current balances.
2. Invest monthly surpluses.
3. Slow down payments.
Based on these three recommendations, Megan would
increase her annual earnings by a total of about $673 ($460
+ $192 + $21). Clearly, Megan can grow her earnings by
better managing her cash balances.

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 Table 15.5a Features of Popular
Marketable Securities

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 Table 15.5b Features of Popular
Marketable Securities

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 Table 15.5c Features of Popular
Marketable Securities

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 Review of Learning Goals

LG1 Understand working capital management, net working capital,

and the related trade-off between profitability and risk.
– Working capital management focuses on managing each of the firm’s
current assets and current liabilities in a manner that positively
contributes to the firm’s value. Net working capital is the difference
between current assets and current liabilities. Risk, in the context of
short-term financial decisions, is the probability that a firm will be
unable to pay its bills as they come due. Assuming a constant level of
total assets, the higher a firm’s ratio of current assets to total assets, the
less profitable the firm, and the less risky it is. The converse is also
true. With constant total assets, the higher a firm’s ratio of current
liabilities to total assets, the more profitable and the more risky the firm
is. The converse of this statement is also true.

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 Review of Learning Goals
(cont.)
LG2 Describe the cash conversion cycle, its funding requirements,
and the key strategies for managing it.
– The cash conversion cycle has three components: (1) average age of
inventory, (2) average collection period, and (3) average payment
period. To minimize its reliance on negotiated liabilities, the financial
manager seeks to (1) turn over inventory as quickly as possible, (2)
collect accounts receivable as quickly as possible, (3) manage mail,
processing, and clearing time, and (4) pay accounts payable as slowly
as possible. Use of these strategies should minimize the length of the
cash conversion cycle.

© 2012 Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. 15-62

 Review of Learning Goals
(cont.)
LG3 Discuss inventory management: differing views, common
techniques, and international concerns.
– The viewpoints of marketing, manufacturing, and purchasing managers
about the appropriate levels of inventory tend to cause higher
inventories than those deemed appropriate by the financial manager.
Four commonly used techniques for effectively managing inventory to
keep its level low are (1) the ABC system, (2) the economic order
quantity (EOQ) model, (3) the just-in-time (JIT) system, and (4)
computerized systems for resource control—MRP, MRP II, and ERP.
International inventory managers place greater emphasis on making
sure that sufficient quantities of inventory are delivered where and
when needed, and in the right condition, than on ordering the
economically optimal quantities.

© 2012 Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. 15-63

 Review of Learning Goals
(cont.)
LG4 Explain the credit selection process and the quantitative
procedure for evaluating changes in credit standards.
– Credit selection techniques determine which customers’
creditworthiness is consistent with the firm’s credit standards. Two
popular credit selection techniques are the five C’s of credit and credit
scoring. Changes in credit standards can be evaluated mathematically
by assessing the effects of a proposed change on profits from sales, the
cost of accounts receivable investment, and bad-debt costs.

© 2012 Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. 15-64

 Review of Learning Goals
(cont.)
LG5 Review the procedures for quantitatively considering cash
discount changes, other aspects of credit terms, and credit
monitoring.
– Changes in credit terms—the cash discount, the cash discount period,
and the credit period—can be quantified similarly to changes in credit
standards. Credit monitoring, the ongoing review of accounts
receivable, frequently involves use of the average collection period and
an aging schedule. Firms use a number of popular collection
techniques.

© 2012 Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. 15-65

 Review of Learning Goals
(cont.)
LG6 Understand the management of receipts and disbursements,
including float, speeding up collections, slowing down
payments, cash concentration, zero-balance accounts, and
investing in marketable securities.
– Float refers to funds that have been sent by the payer but are not yet
usable funds to the payee. The components of float are mail time,
processing time, and clearing time. Float occurs in both the average
collection period and the average payment period. One technique for
speeding up collections is a lockbox system. A popular technique for
slowing payments is controlled disbursing.
– Zero-balance accounts (ZBAs) can be used to eliminate nonearning
cash balances in corporate checking accounts. Marketable securities are
short-term, interest-earning, money market instruments used by the
firm to earn a return on temporarily idle funds.

© 2012 Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. 15-66

 Chapter Resources on
MyFinanceLab
• Chapter Cases
• Group Exercises
• Critical Thinking Problems

© 2012 Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. 15-67