As the new year begins, Australian small businesses are making plans to grow. In fact, 85 per cent of business owners anticipate growth over the next 12 months.*

The top three anticipated sources of growth are new clients or customers from referrals, more business from existing clients and customers, and new products or services. This focus on their business’s growth – and the specific paths they can follow to achieve it – puts owners in prime position to thrive in 2023.

But growth doesn’t occur without keeping an eye on business finances – and that’s where knowing a business’s working capital and cash conversion cycle come into play.

How working capital can inspire growth

In general terms, working capital is an assessment of a business’s ability to cover upcoming costs.

In a perfect world, a business would be paid for its products sold or services delivered without any delay. With no time lag between money going out and money coming in, there would be no need to hold extra funds to tide the business over to the next sale or to cover expenses such as wages, rent and tax.

In reality, however, every business needs a pool of cash on hand to bridge that cash flow gap. This pool is the money available to fund day-to-day operations, and is known as working capital.

And working capital can play an essential role in helping business owners achieve their growth goals.

“Having adequate working capital on hand – and access to more – is one of the most important tools in any business owner’s arsenal,” says Pure Capital co-founder Sam Roby, who specialises in car and equipment loans.

“Working capital allows business owners to take advantage of surprise opportunities that arise, leverage their suppliers by providing better payment terms, and simply give them peace of mind that they have enough cash to cover expenses.”

How to calculate working capital

Use the following formula to calculate working capital:

current assets – current liabilities = working capital

Current assets include anything a business owns, or has a claim on, that can be rapidly turned into cash – think inventory and accounts receivable. Current liabilities are obligations that will soon fall due – think short-term debt and accounts payable. (Note: ‘current’ usually means due within one year).

As an example, imagine a small business owner with $20,000 in cash and $50,000 in stock, and with debtors owing a total of $50,000 due within the next month. The value of the business’s current assets amounts to $120,000.

Let’s say that the sum of short-term expenses and money owed to creditors – including accounts payable, payroll, taxes, monthly subscriptions and rent – comes to $100,000.

Using the working capital formula, $120,000 worth of assets and $100,000 worth of liabilities leaves the business owner with working capital of $20,000. That’s $20,000 on hand to cover gaps in cash flow and any unexpected expenses.

How to calculate the cash conversion cycle

Another way of gaining insight into a business’s cash flow position is to calculate how long it takes, on average, for the money that goes out to come back in. This is known as the operating cycle or cash conversion cycle.

Calculating a business’s cash conversion cycle requires three different values:

  • Inventory days: How long stock sits on the shelf, or how long a business has to pay for labour and materials to create a saleable product.
  • Debtor days: How long it takes to collect payment from clients or customers.
  • Creditor days: How long a business can hold on to cash before it must pay suppliers.

Then, it’s a matter of popping those values into the following formula:

(inventory days + debtor days) – creditor days = cash conversion cycle

If the owner of children’s toy store has their stock sitting on shelves for an average of 55 days, takes 45 days on average to collect payments from customers, and must pay their suppliers every 30 days, the cash conversion cycle amounts to:

(55 inventory days + 45 debtor days) – 30 creditor days = 70 days

The toy retailer would therefore wait 70 days for their outlays to turn back into cash.

The ultimate aim is to reduce the cash conversion cycle, which can be done by encouraging clients to pay invoices sooner. Doing so can help put small business owners – such as the toy store owner – in a place that’s primed for growth, and better equip them for the unexpected, or new moves, in 2023.

*Prospa x YouGov SME Sentiment survey, November 2022