<p><p>Account receivables tie up large amounts of capital in. Various reports show that the actual time for customer to pay their invoices is getting longer. This is a problem both from a society and a business economic perspective. The purpose of the essay is to find out if Swedish companies have longer credit days than normal contractual terms of payment and if so, can the business cycle or the geographical distribution of sales have an impact and does it make a difference if the companies have an active monitoring of the actual customer credit days. To answer this, we studied 12 listed companies in four different sectors between the years 2000-2008. In the analysis, we reason about the results of the study and how the various factors may have influenced the outcome. From this we could draw the conclusion that the days of sales outstanding (DSO) are longer than the normal contractual and that the geographical distribution of customers in Sweden, Europe and elsewhere have been relevant. In the results we found out that companies can influence the outcome of actual customer credit days and this we find positive, because that is something that companies themselves can work with.</p></p>

Account receivables tie up large amounts of capital in. Various reports show that the actual time for customer to pay their invoices is getting longer. This is a problem both from a society and a business economic perspective. The purpose of the essay is to find out if Swedish companies have longer credit days than normal contractual terms of payment and if so, can the business cycle or the geographical distribution of sales have an impact and does it make a difference if the companies have an active monitoring of the actual customer credit days. To answer this, we studied 12 listed companies in four different sectors between the years 2000-2008. In the analysis, we reason about the results of the study and how the various factors may have influenced the outcome. From this we could draw the conclusion that the days of sales outstanding (DSO) are longer than the normal contractual and that the geographical distribution of customers in Sweden, Europe and elsewhere have been relevant. In the results we found out that companies can influence the outcome of actual customer credit days and this we find positive, because that is something that companies themselves can work with.