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How long your money sits in A/R

Days in accounts receivable is how long, on average, revenue waits between the visit and the deposit. Drag your numbers to see where you land — and how much cash is parked beyond a healthy target. Your numbers stay on your device.

Your numbers
Money in A/R right now
Charges billed per month
Gross charges you bill, before contractual adjustments.
Target days in A/R
AAFP and HFMA treat 30–40 days as healthy, under 50 at minimum — it varies by specialty and payer.
Days in A/R
target you
Cash you could free
Healthy A/R target
One number, two stories: days in A/R blends how fast you bill with how often claims are denied and reworked. A single large unpaid claim can distort it — so watch the trend and your over-90-day bucket, not just the headline figure.
One of five numbers worth a weekly look.
Clinic Vitals tracks no-shows, collections, days in A/R, utilisation and retention — from the exports you already have.
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How days in A/R is calculated

The formula is total accounts receivable divided by your average daily charges — where average daily charges is monthly charges × 12 ÷ 365. The figure above uses your own numbers. It answers a blunt question: if you stopped billing today, how many days of charges are still sitting unpaid?

What's a healthy days in A/R?

Here the guidance is unusually consistent. AAFP and HFMA both put the healthy zone at roughly 30–40 days, and under 50 at the very minimum. But it moves with specialty and payer mix, and national figures have been drifting upward — so treat the benchmark as the neighbourhood and your own quarter-over-quarter trend as the real score.

What actually moves it

Raise your clean-claim rate so fewer claims bounce, work denials within days rather than weeks, and collect patient balances at the time of service. Above all, watch the over-90-day bucket — a healthy average can hide a growing pile of old, hard-to-collect claims. The full method is in Days in A/R: what it means, a good benchmark & how to cut it.

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Part of a small set for running a practice on the numbers — see them all on the tools page, or read the five numbers worth a weekly look.