What is the meaning of negative working capital?

Negative working capital means the excess of current liabilities over current assets in an enterprise.

Let’s understand what working capital is to get more clarity about negative working capital.

Meaning of Working Capital

Working Capital refers to the difference between current assets and current liabilities of a business.

Working Capital = Current Assets – Current Liabilities

It is the capital that an enterprise employs to run its daily operations. It indicates the short term liquidity or the capacity to pay off the current liabilities and pay for the daily operations.

Items under Current Assets and Current Liabilities

It is important to know about the items under current assets and current liabilities to understand the significance of working capital.

Current assets include cash and bank balance, accounts receivables, inventories, short term investments, prepaid expenses etc.

Current liabilities include accounts payable, short term loans, bank overdraft, interest on short term investment, outstanding salaries and wages etc.

Types of working capital

Since the working capital is just the difference between current assets and liabilities, the working capital can be one of the following:

• Positive (Current assets > Current liabilities)
• Zero  (Current assets = Current liabilities)
• Negative (Current assets < Current liabilities)

Hence, negative working capital exists when current liabilities are more than current assets.

Implications of having negative working capital

Having negative working capital is not an ideal situation for an enterprise. Having negative working capital indicates that the enterprise is not in a position to pay off its current liabilities and there may be a cash crunch in the business.

An enterprise may have to finance its working capital requirements through long term finance sources if its working capital remains negative for quite a long time.

The ideal situation is to have current assets two times the current liabilities to maintain a good short term liquidity of the business i.e.

Current Assets  = 2(Current Liabilities)