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Current assets less current liabilities — in practice, the money tied up in stock and in what customers owe you, less what you owe suppliers.
It is the gap between paying for something and being paid for it. That gap has to be funded, and growth makes it wider before it makes it better.
Debtor days: how long customers take to pay. Stock days: how long stock sits. Creditor days: how long you take to pay suppliers.
Together they give the cash conversion cycle. Improving any one improves cash, and they are usually improvable in that order of difficulty — debtors first, because ageing is visible and actionable.
Routinely. Profit is an opinion about a period; cash is a fact about a day.
Debtor days, because ageing is visible and chasing is actionable immediately.
Weekly. Monthly management accounts are too slow to act on.
Half an hour with your own data usually saves reading three of these. The guides will still be here afterwards.