DSO / DPO Calculator
On average, how many days does it take to collect a sale — and how many days are you taking to pay a supplier? Two numbers that condense a whole ageing report into one trackable figure each.
DSO / DPO calculator
Days Sales Outstanding and Days Payable Outstanding — the approximation: balance ÷ (period activity ÷ days in period).
Educational illustration only. This is a standard approximation, not a precise accounting figure — real calculations vary by methodology and period definition.
The formula
DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) ≈ Total Receivables ÷ (Total Sales ÷ Days in Period). DPO (Days Payable Outstanding) is the mirror: Total Payables ÷ (Total Purchases ÷ Days in Period). Both are approximations, not precise accounting figures — useful for tracking a trend month over month, not for treating as an exact number.
Reading the trend
A rising DSO usually means customers are taking longer to pay — worth investigating before it becomes a cash-flow problem. A rising DPO can mean a business is successfully negotiating longer payment terms, or it can mean suppliers aren’t being paid on time — the number alone doesn’t say which, so it’s a starting point for a question, not a final answer.
Build the full ageing report in Excel
DSO and DPO are the summary numbers at the end of a full 4-bucket ageing analysis, taught step by step in Advanced Excel for Finance & Business.