How much cash would you have today if every client paid ten days sooner?
Most finance teams can tell you their debtors balance. Far fewer can say what each day of it costs. The arithmetic takes two minutes, and it changes the conversation with your executive, your board and your bank.
The arithmetic
Ten days is 10 divided by 365 of a year: about 2.7 percent. So every ten days your clients take to pay holds back cash equal to about 2.7 percent of your annual revenue.
| Annual revenue | 10 days | 20 days | 30 days | 45 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R50 million | R1.4m | R2.7m | R4.1m | R6.2m |
| R100 million | R2.7m | R5.5m | R8.2m | R12.3m |
| R250 million | R6.8m | R13.7m | R20.5m | R30.8m |
| R500 million | R13.7m | R27.4m | R41.1m | R61.6m |
Take a R100 million business whose government clients pay, on average, at 75 days. Bring that to 55 days and about R5.5 million comes back into the bank. That is cash already earned, so no new contract is needed to release it.
Work out your own number in three steps
- Revenue. Take the last twelve months of invoiced revenue.
- Debtors days. Take your total trade receivables today, divide by that revenue, and multiply by 365. A R100 million business with R20 million owed is at 73 days.
- The target. Pick the days you believe you could reach. The difference, multiplied by revenue and divided by 365, is the cash you would release.
Our Cash Release Calculator does the three steps for you. Use the calculator
The cost you are paying on it
Cash tied up in debtors gets funded somewhere: an overdraft, a revolving facility, delayed payments to your own suppliers, or a founder’s own account. Two reference points:
- At prime (repo plus 3.5 percentage points, 10.75 percent from 1 November 2026), R5.5 million on overdraft for a year costs about R590,000 in interest before the bank’s margin.
- If your contract sets no interest rate, the prescribed rate of mora interest is the same repo plus 3.5 points. The law lets you claim it from a late-paying department. Very few suppliers do.
The cost that does not appear on the income statement is often larger: the project you could not start because the deposit was stuck, the subcontractor who stopped trusting your payment dates, the hours your finance manager spends chasing instead of planning.
Where the days come from
When we read a debtors book, the days usually fall into three groups:
- Days you can remove before the work starts: the missing order number, the unnamed acceptance signatory, the invoice without the fields the buyer’s system checks, the lapsed CSD registration.
- Days you can influence early: the approver nobody knew by name, the goods receipt never posted, the invoice sent to the wrong address, the follow-up that waited for month end.
- Days outside your control: a buyer with no budget, an insolvent municipality.
The first two groups are where the cash release comes from. The third you plan around, with contract terms, proof of receipt and escalation.
A board-ready line
“Our debtors are at 73 days. Every ten days we remove is R2.7 million in the bank. Here are the five accounts that hold most of it, and why each is stuck.”
That last sentence is what Your Starting Number produces from your own aged receivables report, in five working days, for R18,000 excluding VAT, credited if you continue into the programme.
Start smaller? Bring one stuck invoice to a 30-minute Stuck Invoice Diagnostic. Book a call · Use the calculator · Back to the guide
Book a Stuck Invoice Diagnostic · Cash Release Calculator · The full guide: getting paid by government on time
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