Accounts Receivable Turnover Ratio: What Is It, How to Calculate It, and How To Improve It

Generally speaking, a higher ratio indicates more efficient use of credit and quicker payment collection, while a lower ratio may suggest potential issues with managing customer debt. A higher ratio is generally better as it indicates a company is collecting payment from its customers more efficiently and managing its cash flow more effectively. That’s because it may be due to an inadequate collection process, bad credit policies, or customers that are not financially viable or creditworthy. A low turnover ratio typically implies that the company should reassess its credit policies to ensure the timely collection of its receivables. However, if a company with a low ratio improves its collection process, it might lead to an influx of cash from collecting on old credit or receivables.

A high accounts receivable turnover ratio can indicate that the company is conservative about extending credit to customers and is efficient or aggressive with its collection practices. It can also mean the company’s customers are of high quality, and/or it runs on a cash basis. Getting paid promptly and regularly gives your business the cash flow it needs to grow, innovate, and compete effectively in today’s marketplace. The average accounts receivable(AR) ratio indicates whether a business is able to collect its dues efficiently.

What is Accounts Receivable Turnover Ratio (ART) and How is it Important in Accounting?

Whether that means modifying their payment terms, redefining their qualifications for credit, or improving their process efficiency with regard to consistent and accurate invoicing. For one, because AR turnover ratio represents an average, any customers that either pay uncommonly early or uncommonly late can skew the result. Accounts receivable are effectively interest-free loans that are short-term in nature and are extended by companies to their customers. If a company generates a sale to a client, it could extend terms of 30 or 60 days, meaning the client has 30 to 60 days to pay for the product. A simpler billing structure can eliminate a lot of confusion and panic on the customer’s side. This means that every month (or at agreed intervals), the customer pays a fixed price for your product or service.

• For a fair assessment of the accounts receivable ratio, it is crucial to compare businesses with the same working capital structures, same payment terms, and within the same industries.
• Reconciling involves comparing invoices with payments received and making sure they match up.
• If you put up an average grocery store against a car part manufacturer, you will get vastly different ratios that will likely lead you to the wrong conclusions.
• A company may track its accounts receivable turnover ratio every 30 days or at the end of each quarter.
• Tracking accounts receivable turnover ratio shows you how quickly the company is converting its receivables into cash on an average basis.

Businesses of all sizes benefit from having good customer relationships because happy customers are happy to pay for your goods or services. For a fair assessment of the accounts receivable ratio, it is crucial to compare businesses with the same working capital structures, same payment terms, and within the same industries. Choose competitors that are roughly the same size and preferably have the same business models as your company. That way, you will get an accurate idea of your turnover ratio compared to the industry average. If the company had a 30-day payment policy for its customers, the average accounts receivable turnover shows that, on average, customers are paying one day late. For example, if the company’s distribution division is operating poorly, it might be failing to deliver the correct goods to customers in a timely manner.

Therefore, it’s important for businesses to regularly monitor their accounts receivable turnover and make sure that their practices are optimized for maximum efficiency. Additionally, businesses should also keep an eye on industry trends in order to ensure that their own AR turnover remains competitive. The accounts receivable turnover ratio is an important measure of a company’s efficiency, as it provides insight into how quickly they are able to turn receivables into profits. However, this metric comes with certain limitations that should be considered when analyzing the data.

Accounts receivable turnover ratio measures the efficiency of your business’ collections efforts. In this blog, we discuss how to calculate it, its strengths and limitations for reporting, and tips for improving your ratio. A low AR turnover indicates that a company’s receivables are not being effectively managed and that the company is not collecting payments from its customers in a timely manner. This can be a sign of financial distress and may lead to the company defaulting on its obligations. The AR Turnover Ratio is calculated by dividing net sales by average account receivables.

Like other financial ratios, the accounts receivable turnover ratio is most useful when compared across time periods or different companies. For example, a company may compare the receivables turnover ratios of companies that operate within the same industry. In this example, a company can better understand whether the processing of its credit sales are in line with competitors or whether they are lagging behind its competition. The accounts receivable turnover ratio (ART) is a financial ratio that measures a company’s effectiveness in collecting its receivables. The turnover ratio is calculated by dividing the total value of a company’s credit sales by the average value of its accounts receivable over a period of time. Reconciling your accounts receivable frequently is essential to assessing and improving your accounts receivable turnover rate.

Importance of Accounts Receivable Turnover Ratio

Send them an email, give them a call, or possibly even offer them a discount or a special deal. They won’t risk damaging the relationship they have with your brand by not paying on time. Maintaining a good ratio track record also makes you and your company more attractive to lenders, so you can raise more capital to expand your business or save for a rainy day. But there are variances in how well companies manage collections from that point forward. All that said, a high turnover ratio is generally considered to be better than a low turnover ratio.

• Additionally, provide detailed instructions on how customers can make payments in order to streamline the process.
• A company could improve its turnover ratio by making changes to its collection process.
• All such information is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly.
• Offering a slight discount can be a useful method to prompt customers to pay their invoices earlier, which has the potential to enhance your accounts receivable turnover rate.

When doing financial modeling, businesses will also use receivables turnover in days to forecast their accounts receivable balance. They’ll do this by multiplying their revenue for each period by their turnover days, then dividing the product by the number of days in the period. Tracking accounts receivable turnover ratio shows you how quickly the company is converting its receivables into cash on an average basis. Finance teams can use AR turnover ratio when making balance sheet forecasts, as it provides a general expectation of when receivables will be paid.

ways AR automation software helps improve your AR turnover ratio

In other words, its accounts receivables are better protected as service can be disconnected before further credit is extended to the customer. Let us consider the ways a hypothetical business might use the accounts receivable turnover formula in calculating their own collection process efficiency. By proactively notifying your customers about their payment with personalized communications, you improve your chances of getting paid before receivables become overdue and speed up receivable turnover. With Versapay, you can deliver custom notifications automatically and direct customers to pay online, eliminating much of your team’s need for collections calls. Delivering invoices in a more convenient format also increases customers’ likelihood of paying you faster, improving your collection efficiency. Collection challenges are often a result of inefficiencies in the accounts receivable (AR) process.

Fixed-free billing goes a long way in ensuring that you don’t get calls from customers wondering why their bill is higher than expected. When everything is neatly laid out on paper, it will be much easier for your customers to understand what the bill says and what amount is required for them to pay. If a company is too conservative in extending credit, it may lose sales to competitors or incur a sharp drop in sales when the economy slows. Even if your business already has an enviable AR turnover ratio, there’s always (or at least, usually) room for improvement. They offer credit sales for their customers, and in the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2019, recorded $2,000,000 in annual credit sales, with returns of $50,000. Both AP and AR use a variety of metrics and activity ratios (also called efficiency ratios) to measure performance and efficiency in order to lower costs and provide greater value to the organizations they serve.

Low Receivable Turnover

Additionally, tracking the AR turnover rate reveals any potential issues or problems that could be affecting customer payments. It is essential for any business looking to maintain financial health and stability that they monitor their accounts receivable turnover rate regularly. Shortening your payment terms can be an effective way to increase accounts receivable turnover.

As a result, customers might delay paying their receivables, which would decrease the company’s receivables turnover ratio. To truly understand the meaning of your company’s receivables turnover ratio, you need to understand how it fits with the overall performance and how you can effectively compare with other businesses. Keeping up with your accounts receivable is key to maximizing cash flow and identifying opportunities for financial growth and improvement. In being proactive and persistent in ensuring that debts owed are paid in a timely fashion, businesses can boost the efficiency, reputability and profitability of their financial endeavors. The accounts receivable turnover ratio, also known as the debtors turnover ratio, indicates the effectiveness of a company’s credit control system. Net Credit Sales, also known as net sales on credit, is an important accounting formula used to measure a business’s performance.

A lower AR ratio compared to the industry average indicates poor collections and vice-versa. The accounts receivable turnover ratio is comprised of net credit sales and accounts receivable. A company can improve its ratio calculation by being more conscious of who it offers credit sales to in addition to deploying internal resources towards the collection of outstanding debts. The numerator of the accounts receivable turnover ratio is net credit sales, the amount of revenue earned by a company paid via credit. This figure include cash sales as cash sales do not incur accounts receivable activity. Net credit sales also incorporates sales discounts or returns from customers and is calculated as gross credit sales less these residual reductions.

If it swings too high, you may be too aggressive on credit policies and collections and curbing your sales unnecessarily. Companies with more complex accounting information systems may be able to easily extract its average accounts receivable balance at the end of each day. The company may then take the average of these balances; however, it must be mindful of how day-to-day entries may change the average. Similar to calculating net credit sales, the average accounts receivable balance should only cover a very specific time period. To maintain a high accounts receivables turnover, you need to have strong connections with your customers.

A company may track its accounts receivable turnover ratio every 30 days or at the end of each quarter. In this manner, a company can better understand how its collection plan is faring and whether it is improving in its collections. On the other hand, having too conservative a credit policy may drive away potential customers. These customers may then do business with competitors who can offer and extend them the credit they need. If a company loses clients or suffers slow growth, it may be better off loosening its credit policy to improve sales, even though it might lead to a lower accounts receivable turnover ratio. The denominator of the accounts receivable turnover ratio is the average accounts receivable balance.

Providing discounts may help in fostering positive customer relationships by demonstrating appreciation for their timeliness. This will result in better cash flow and a lower turnover rate for accounts receivable. By tracking it over time, companies can identify areas where their credit policies need improvement in order to make it easier for customers to pay and maximize their profits.

It measures the value of a company’s sales or revenues relative to the value of its assets and indicates how efficiently a company uses its assets to generate revenue. A low asset turnover ratio indicates that the company is using its assets inefficiently to generate sales. An efficient company has a higher accounts receivable turnover ratio while an inefficient company has a lower ratio. This metric is commonly used to compare companies within the same industry to gauge whether they are on par with their competitors. A receivables turnover ratio is a financial ratio that measures a company’s ability to turn its receivables into cash.