Managing the Cash Outflow—Slowing Down Disbursements The objective of managing
cash outflows is to increase the company’s float by slowing down the disbursement
process. This is exactly the opposite of our objective of managing cash collections. There
are several tools at the disposal of the cash manager for accomplishing this end, and we
describe two here. These are the use of (1) zero balance accounts and (2) payable-through
drafts. (See Table 17-1.)
Zero Balance Accounts Large corporations that operate multiple branches, divisions, or
subsidiaries often maintain numerous bank accounts (in different banks) for the purpose of
making timely operating disbursements. It does make good business sense for payments for
purchased parts that go into, say, an automobile transmission to be made by the Transmission
and Chassis Division of the auto manufacturer rather than its central office.
Zero balance accounts (ZBA) permit centralized control (at the headquarters level) over
the firm’s cash outflows while maintaining divisional disbursing authority. Under this system the
firm’s authorized employees, representing their various divisions, continue to write checks
on their individual accounts. Note that the numerous individual disbursing accounts are
now all located in the same “concentration” bank. Actually these separate accounts contain
no funds at all, thus the label, “zero balance.”
The firm’s authorized agents write their payment checks as usual against their specific
accounts. These checks clear through the banking system in the usual way. On a daily basis
the checks are presented to the firm’s concentration bank (the drawee bank) for payment.
As the checks are paid by the bank, negative (debit) balances build up in the proper disbursing
accounts. At the end of each day the negative balances are restored to a zero level by
means of credits to the ZBAs; a corresponding reduction of funds is then made against the
firm’s concentration (master) demand deposit account.