In the canonical cash walk, AR-vs-AP Terms is a $1.44M drop, the second-largest single line in the trapped-cash position, behind only the collection gap. It exists for one reason: the money the enterprise pays out and the money it collects in are governed by two sets of terms that were never reconciled against each other.
Two sides, one position
Receivable terms are set by sales, in the room, to win business. Payable terms are set by procurement, separately, to secure supply. Each side optimizes locally and neither sees the composite. The result is structurally predictable: your largest customers, who carry the most leverage, negotiate the longest terms, while your suppliers hold you closer. The gap between the two is financed from your own balance sheet, and no single function is measured on it because no single function owns both sides.
The Hackett Group’s 2025 survey shows the two sides moving independently at the macro scale: DPO rebounded to 59 days as buyers pressed their advantage, even as DSO and inventory deteriorated. Receivables now represent roughly $600 billion of the total working-capital opportunity, with an 18-day DSO gap between top-quartile and median performers. Those are not collections-effort gaps. They are the compounded cost of terms that drift, unmanaged, one negotiation at a time.
Terms are negotiated on two sides of the house by people who never compare notes, and the gap between them is a loan you are making.
Terms drift one negotiation at a time
No one decides to finance their customers. It happens by accretion. A key account asks for 15 more days and gets them because the quarter needs closing. A supplier tightens because a category got scarce. Each concession is defensible in isolation and invisible in aggregate. Reviewed a year later, the matched book reveals a position nobody chose: paying in 45, collecting in 63, and funding the 18-day difference across the entire revenue base.
The false economy of stretching suppliers
The instinctive fix, stretching payables to match, is the wrong lever pulled hard. Pushing DPO too far damages the supplier relationships that resilience depends on, forfeits early-payment discounts, and invites price increases that cost more than the cash it frees. Suppliers gaining clout, as Hackett notes, is not a market accident; it is often the downstream cost of a buyer who stretched terms without pricing the consequence. Terms are a commercial instrument, not a blunt one.
The recovery mechanism
The fix is to manage terms as one portfolio rather than two ledgers. Rebalance across the top quartile of spend and revenue, where a few days moves real money, and price term extensions where a customer genuinely values them rather than granting them by default. Where a customer will pay for 60-day terms, sell them the terms; where they won’t, hold the line.
This is a commercial-policy decision informed by the full position, not a collections campaign run after the fact. The $1.44M does not come back by chasing invoices harder. It comes back by comparing the two sides of the book as the single position they have always been.