A Quarterly Report for Benchmarking A/R Performance
Q4 2018 Report
Dun & Bradstreet and the Credit Research Foundation have partnered to help the commercial credit community by jointly creating this Accounts Receivable and Days Sales Outstanding Industry Report. We advocate that our common communities of credit risk professionals use this quarterly report to benchmark their A/R performance against industry averages – and to investigate the differences. Although differences could be driven by unique company portfolios, we believe that using credit best practices play an important part in driving A/R performance.
“The Credit Research Foundation has long desired to expand on its own quarterly report, the National Summary of Domestic Trade Receivables (NSDTR), and this joint report contains A/R aging percentages on considerably more industry segments. This expanded coverage of industry segments will provide the credit community more value for benchmarking credit department performance,” said William F. Balduino, President and COO of the Credit Research Foundation.
The Q4 2018 report lists 229 industries by SIC code, along with the percentage of Dun & Bradstreet reporting companies that are current on payments, then slow to 30 days late, slow to 60 days late, slow to 90 days late, and then severely delinquent at 91+ days late. The final column is the Credit Research Foundation’s DSO figure (for more information, see Methodology below.) The Q4 2018 report data is presented in 15 different industry segments: Agriculture, Chemicals, Construction, Consumer Goods, Energy and Utilities, Food, Machinery, Metals and Mining, Manufacturing, Retail, Professional and Business Services, Technology and Electronics, Transportation, Wholesale, and Wood and Paper.
As a preview of the data available, the chart below shows the top 15 industries that paid more than 90 days late during Q4, October 1 – December 31.
Top 15 Industries Paying Severely Late in Q4 2018
| SIC Code | Industry | % Paying Current | Up To 30 Days Late | 30-60 Days Late | 60-90 Days Late | 91+ Days Late | CRF DSO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2741 | Miscellaneous publishing | 3.7% | 1.3% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 94.0% | |
| 2759 | Commercial printing | 22.6% | 10.9% | 3.8% | 2.1% | 60.7% | |
| 27 | Printing, publishing, and allied industries | 42.6% | 6.8% | 2.3% | 1.2% | 47.1% | 39.63 |
| 7372 | Prepackaged software services | 52.4% | 3.1% | 1.8% | 1.0% | 41.7% | |
| 5193 | Wholesale flowers/florist supplies | 60.5% | 7.2% | 1.7% | 1.4% | 29.3% | |
| 0181 | Ornamental nursery | 60.1% | 3.1% | 6.0% | 5.5% | 25.4% | |
| 3822 | Manufacturing of environmental controls | 49.2% | 19.9% | 6.5% | 4.1% | 20.4% | |
| 01 | Agricultural production - crops | 58.9% | 6.5% | 6.7% | 8.3% | 19.6% | |
| 7514 | Passenger car rental | 45.9% | 21.6% | 9.7% | 5.2% | 17.6% | |
| 5142 | Wholesale packaged frozen goods | 68.9% | 12.8% | 1.7% | 1.0% | 15.6% | |
| 7359 | Equipment rental/leasing | 50.7% | 10.4% | 15.6% | 8.4% | 14.9% | |
| 37 | Transportation equipment | 72.6% | 9.5% | 2.7% | 1.3% | 14.0% | |
| 5047 | Wholesale medical/hospital equipment | 59.4% | 3.2% | 18.0% | 6.6% | 12.9% | |
| 3444 | Manufacturing of sheet metalwork | 77.6% | 8.1% | 1.6% | 0.9% | 11.8% | |
| 3496 | Manufacturing of miscellaneous fabricated wire products | 69.6% | 11.6% | 4.8% | 2.4% | 11.7% |
Methodology
This report is created from Dun & Bradstreet’s robust dataset of commercial accounts receivable payment data as provided by credit departments for credit reporting purposes. The DSO numbers are those collected by CRF from its NSDTR survey process. Where possible, Dun & Bradstreet’s A/R aging data and CRF’s DSO numbers are presented side by side for an industry. Both sets of data are presented when the numbers of providers and survey results meet a minimum threshold of relevance.
