Introduction
Working Capital Management tends to be one of the most crucial impacts on the business because it impacts the company’s liquidity position.
This is an increasingly important metric for the company because of the reason that it ensures that they can meet their day-to-day operational expenses in a smooth matter.
Working capital directly reflects how well the company manages its resources and its ability to pay off its debts.
The reduction of working capital means that organizations can maintain and duly manage their resources in the sense that they can settle their debts in time while ensuring a quick recovery track record from the company.
Therefore, the management of working capital tends to be an increasingly important aspect that needs to be inculcated in the overall strategic decision-making of the company.
How does working capital impact company’s cash flow?
Working capital, as mentioned earlier, is referred to as the capital that the business has to meet its running day-to-day operational expenses.
It mainly comprises of collection from accounts receivables from the company as well as payments to the accounts payables, as well as other relevant creditors of the company.
In this regard, it is quite rudimentary to ensure that companies can dissect their working capital structure, to determine and ascertain how changes within their working capital management can inevitably result in improved cash flows for the company.
It can be seen that working capital is broadly categorized into two broad categories, cash incoming, and cash outgoing.
Cash incoming refers to the income collected from debtors. The average time in which debtors settle their accounts is referred to as an average cash collection period.
If this period is reduced, it automatically implies that the organization can collect its revenues from the debtors relatively quickly.
Hence, this means that they can get cash inflows at a faster pace as compared to their previous turnaround times.
On the other hand, cash outflows include payments that are made to suppliers.
Average Cash Payout time means the overall timeline in which the company settles its debts with its creditors.
This period needs to be improved by asking for more time to settle their debtors.
These components collectively formulate the Cash Conversion Cycle of the company.
This means the average time it takes for the sales to be realized in the form of cash in the company’s bank accounts.
The major components that influence this metric are the average receivables duration and the average payables duration.
A reduction in working capital simply implies that the company can reduce its cash conversion cycle so that at any given point in time, it has a reasonable amount of cash or liquid resources to settle its operational expenses.
This considerably improves their cash flow, as reiterated under the following points:
- Quicker customer turnaround times: This helps the company collect money faster so that they have more resources at any given time.
- Delayed payment times: Helps the company to hold on to the cash they have earned by delaying their expenses as much as possible.
Therefore, a reduction in working capital greatly helps the companies to manage their cash cycles, and ensure that they can get cash in a faster manner.
The duration of the cash conversion cycle reduces with this management, which directly productively impacts the cash flows.
This simply implies that they have a considerable amount of liquid resources at any given point in time.
Conclusion
Therefore, there is no doubt about the fact that working capital management tends to have a great impact on the cash flows of the company.
In the modern-day age, this is highly helpful for the company because it helps them to ensure that their liquidity is intact and that they can properly meet their expenses.
This can remarkably improve the company’s credit rating, which can help them sign better deals with creditors because their metrics are favorable from an investor’s perspective.
Reduction of working capital cycles helps companies realize revenues faster so that they can avail of early discounts on payments, without harnessing their reputations in any context because of unnecessarily prolonged payments.
