W EEKLY EDITION AUGUST 21, 2019
G et ti ng Pa i d : Part I
By Karleen Kos, PSAI Executive Director
Depending on what source you trust, the statistics on this are either mildly disturbing or downright
frightening. The Credit Research Foundation , a nonprofit association for credit management
professionals, says that in the US during the first quarter of 2019 on average:
• Companies have 39. 18 days of sales in their accounts payable systems
• 86.62% of accounts are current
• 13.38% of accounts are overdue, with an average lateness of a little over five days
• Less than 1% of accounts are more than 90 days late
These numbers are for commerce overal l; they are not specific to portable sanitation. Even so,
they should give you a sense of what is "normal" out there – and if you check out the link above
you will see that collections are trending ever so slightly toward longer times to get paid. Another
source (which we have not been able to verify independently) states that 43% of small businesses
have customers that are more than 90 days overdue. In other words, there's a lot of money that
folks like you are owed and it's not doing their companies any g ood sitting on the books.
Whether your numbers are better or worse than these the question is this: how long can you
afford to carry your customers' debt? Large companies and government agencies tend to be the
worst about paying on time, but they are cert ainly not alone. It just isn't possible to avoid doing
business with everyone who might pay late.
P AGE 2
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