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Working capital is the money a business has available to cover its short-term obligations — the difference between what you own that turns into cash soon, and what you owe soon. It's the cushion that lets you pay this month's bills while waiting on last month's invoices.
How it's calculated
Working capital = current assets − current liabilities. Current assets include cash, accounts receivable, and anything else that converts to cash within a year. Current liabilities are what's due within a year: supplier bills, short-term loans, taxes owed. A positive number means you can cover near-term obligations; a negative one means you can't without new money coming in.
Why receivables complicate the picture
Accounts receivable counts as a current asset — but it isn't cash yet. A business can show healthy working capital on paper while most of it is sitting in unpaid invoices, leaving very little actual cash to pay bills with. That's why cash flow and DSO matter alongside working capital: the slower you collect, the less of your working capital is actually usable.
What shrinks it
- Slow collection, which keeps value locked in receivables instead of cash.
- Paying suppliers faster than clients pay you, which widens the timing gap.
- Fast growth, which often requires spending on materials and labor before the matching revenue arrives.
- Taking on short-term debt to cover a gap, which adds to current liabilities.
What strengthens it
Collecting faster is the most direct lever — our DSO improvement calculator shows how much cash a shorter collection cycle would free up. Deposits on larger work, shorter payment terms, and negotiating longer terms with your own suppliers all help from different angles.
How much is enough?
There's no universal figure, but a practical test: could you cover two or three months of fixed costs if new payments slowed down unexpectedly? If the honest answer is no, building that cushion is worth prioritizing before it's needed — working capital is much easier to build during a good month than during a bad one.