DSO

Days sales outstanding: receivables as days of revenue

One of the 64 measures in Stock Scorer, under Quality — How much of the revenue is really kept — and what did it take to earn it?

How it is worked out

How many days of sales are still owed by customers. A high figure is revenue booked that has not yet been paid for: slow-paying customers, generous terms, or sales pulled forward. Read against the company's own history and its peers -- a contractor and a grocer live on different scales.

How to read it

lower is better; fifteen days or under reads as cash on delivery, five months as a business financing its customers

Which figures it needs

Computed from 2 figures taken from the filing:

• receivables
• revenue

The XBRL tags behind it

These are the element names looked for in a filing, in order. The first one a company reports is the one used, and the company page names which it was — so any figure here can be checked against the filing it came from.

• AccountsReceivableNetCurrent
• ReceivablesNetCurrent
• TradeAndOtherCurrentReceivables
• CurrentTradeReceivables
• TradeReceivables
• RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax
• Revenues
• RevenueFromContractWithCustomerIncludingAssessedTax
• SalesRevenueNet
• SalesRevenueServicesNet
• RevenueFromContractsWithCustomers
• Revenue

Whether it counts

This measure is not counted by default. It can be added to Quality on the dashboard, and it then takes its share of that dimension.