What is the cost of maintaining receivables?


The costs with respect to maintenance of receivables can be identified as follows:

1. Capital Costs

Maintenance of accounts receivable results in blocking of the firm’s financial resources in them. This is because there is a time lag between the sale of goods to customers and the payments by them. The firm has, therefore, to arrange for additional funds to meet its own obligations, such as payment to employees, suppliers of raw materials, etc., while awaiting for payments from its customers. Additional funds may either be raised from outside or out of profits retained in the business. In first the case, the firm has to pay interest to the outsider while in the latter case, there is an opportunity cost to the firm, i.e., the money which the firm could have earned otherwise by investing the funds elsewhere.

2. Administrative Costs

The firm has to incur additional administrative costs for maintaining accounts receivable in the form of salaries to the staff kept for maintaining accounting records relating to customers, cost of conducting investigation regarding potential credit customers to determine their credit worthiness etc.

3. Collection Costs

The firm has to incur costs for collecting the payments from its credit customers. Sometimes, additional steps may have to be taken to recover money from defaulting customers.

4. Defaulting Costs

Sometimes after making all serious efforts to collect money from defaulting customers, the firm may not be able to recover the over dues because of the inability of the customers. Such debts are treated as bad debts and have to be written off since they cannot be realised.

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