Summary and review
The foregoing dicussion of working capital produces a fairly complex picture. As we have seen,working capital management must take all possible interdependencies into account results in a very myopic approach to the problem.The important point raised here is that working capital management involves trade offs that may involve liquidity and profitability,as well as other trade offs. Moreover,some explicit account of risk must be made.This may be accomplished via some of the methods discussed earlier. Regardless of the method chosen,taking account of risk is an important element in working capital. How ever,the issue becomes extremely complex due to the relationship that exists between the working capital policy and the overall financial policy of a firm.
Cash management refers to the decision-making framework that determines the appropriate levels of cash and marketable securities that must be held on hand to meet the firm's payment requirement.the need for cash management derives form the lack of synchronization between cash receipts and cash disbursements.Because the holding of idle cash has opportunity cost,the financial manager ensures that only a minimum amount is held and the remaining liquidity is assured through the holding of marketable securities that earn a positive return.There are several ways to formulate the cash management problem and obtain meaningful solutions.