The working capital describes the short-term financial position and focus on cash flow and the actual inflow and outflow of money in the company. Working capital is part of the company's financing and consists of the company's current assets and current liabilities. There are resources that are used in the daily activity and can be optimized. The more effective they are in circulation, the higher value they create. The control of working capital is called Working Capital Management and has its basis in the company’s Working Capital Policy. This means that the policy is the decisions and management describes how the company will practice it. Small businesses, which constitute the majority of Sweden's corporate structure, are often totally dependent on their profits to develop and grow. They have in many cases more difficult access to external capital for investment and are therefore dependent on the ability of self-financing and optimization of the capital tied up in business. The study focuses on small companies in the manufacturing sector and examines if the Working Capital Policy has a relationship to profitability. The study concludes that among companies that have an aggressive policy there is no relationship between the Working Capital Policy and profitability. A company that has a defensive policy has a very weak negative relationship between the Working Capital Policy and profitability, and that the relationship may be due to chance. A weaker link between the Working Capital Policy and profitability are found when the entire sample is studied as a single entity without a breakdown between aggressive and defensive Working Capital Policy, this may also be due to chance. A review and analysis of empirical data in the study notes that the Working Capital Policy that companies are using may be a prerequisite for being able to operate rather than a tool to maximize profitability. Approximately the same results have been found in another Swedish study, other results have been found in different countries, but these results may be influenced by how well the structures of the economies of these countries are developed.

Det är vanligt förekommande att företag låter sig leverantörsfinansieras med handelskrediter. Den internationella forskningen är omfattande rörande vilka egenskaper och förhållanden sommotiverar leverantörsfinansiering. Syftet med denna studie är att visa vilka faktorer som är bestämmande för användandet av handelskrediter i svenska små och medelstora företag. Undersökningen inriktas på att studera vilket samband lönsamhet och skuldsättning har till handelskrediter. Företags ålder och storlek studeras också i förhållande till handelskrediter.Studien genomförs med en multipel regressionsanalys där den beroende variabelnhandelskrediter representeras av leverantörsskulder. Vad gäller de obereonde variablernarepresenteras lönsamhet av avkastning på totalt kapital, skuldsättning av kortfristiga respektive långfristiga skulder, ålder är en logaritm av företagets ålder och storleken är enlogaritm av företagets omsättning. Resultatet visar att det finns ett samband mellan handelskrediter och lönsamhet samt skuldsättning. I båda fallen är detta samband negativt. Det innebär att om ett företag är lönsamt har företaget en mindre andel handelskrediter och om ett företag har stor andel skuldsättning minskar andelen handelskrediter. Förklaringen tilldet negativa sambandet vad gäller lönsamhet är pecking order - teorin. Skuldsättningens negativa samband förklaras av utbytesteorin. / It is common for corporations to be financed by their suppliers through trade credits. There are also a lot of international studies regarding the determinants of finance through tradecredit. The aim of this study is to investigate the determinant factors for the use of trade creditin swedish small and medium enterprises (SME). The study aims to investigate the relationship that profit and debt has to trade credits. I also intend to investigate how factors such as age and sizes of the company affect the use of trade credit. The study is made with amultiple linear regression analysis and the dependent variable trade credit is represented byaccounts payable. Regarding the independent variables, profit is represented by return onassets, debt is represented by short term and long term debt, age is a logaritm of thecompanies age and size is a logaritm of the companies turnover. The result shows that there isa relationship between trade credit, profit and debt. In both cases the relationship is significantand negative. This means that if a company is profitable it will receive less trade credit and ifa company has a big share of debt the share of received trade credits will be less. The explanation to the negative relationship regarding profit is the theory of pecking order. Regarding debt the negative relationship can be explanied with the substitution theory.