Working Capital Analytics

Finalert builds the measurement and the detail underneath it: aging by customer and vendor, collection effectiveness, the disputes and deductions slowing cash down, and inventory that has stopped moving. The reporting runs monthly. What you do about a slow payer or a supplier term stays your decision.

The measures themselves are ordinary. Days sales outstanding, days payable outstanding, days inventory outstanding and the cash conversion cycle that combines them. What makes them useful is the detail underneath and a consistent calculation: the same day-count convention, the same treatment of credit notes, and the same revenue base every period, so a two-day move means something happened.

Finalert measures the cash tied up in your operating cycle and reports where it is stuck. The headline measures are days sales outstanding, days payable outstanding and days inventory outstanding, combined into the cash conversion cycle: the number of days between paying for something and collecting the cash from selling it. We calculate them the same way every period, state the convention in writing, and attach a dollar value to each day so the figure can be discussed as cash rather than as a ratio on a slide.

Underneath the headline sits the detail that makes it actionable. Receivables aged by customer and by invoice with the agreed terms alongside, so a customer who pays at sixty days on thirty day terms is named rather than averaged into a bucket. Payables aged the same way, with early payment discounts taken or missed. Inventory aged by item with turns, coverage in weeks and the lines that have not moved in a quarter.

Collections, disputes and payables

On the receivable side we track collection effectiveness against what was available to collect, not just the closing balance, and we separate slow payment from disputed payment. Those need different responses. A dispute or a deduction is a process failure somewhere upstream: a pricing error, a short shipment, a missing purchase order number on the invoice. We report disputes by root cause and by age, because the same three causes usually account for most of the cash held up.

On the payable side the question is whether you are paying early without being paid for it. We show actual days to pay against contractual terms by vendor, the discounts captured and missed, and the payment runs that went out ahead of schedule. Stretching a supplier is a commercial decision with consequences, so we report the position and the value of a change rather than recommending which relationships you should test.

Inventory, scenarios and scope

Where you hold stock, we report turns by product line, coverage in weeks against recent demand, and the slow and non-moving items with their cost and their last movement date. Those items are cash sitting on a shelf, and they tend to be invisible inside a single inventory total. We also model the obvious scenarios: what five days off DSO releases, what a shift in payment terms is worth, and what clearing the non-moving lines would return.

The measurement and the reporting are ours; the decisions are yours. Which customer to put on hold, which supplier terms to renegotiate, which stock to write down and what a reasonable provision looks like are calls for your finance leadership, and a write-down is an accounting judgment that stays with your controller and your CPA. Finalert does not sign tax filings, issue audit or attest opinions, give legal advice, or act as your accountant of record, and we do not chase your customers for payment.