Optimal Short Term Financing Decision

The cash requirements of many firms follow a seasonal pattern. These firms may obtain short term cash to cover their seasonal needs from a variety of sources: e.g., lines of credit, delaying of accounts payable, term loans, pledging or factoring receivables, etc. Each of these alternative sources of cash may have different costs as well as special restrictions.

Given the set of cash requirements and the costs and constraints relating to alternative sources of cash, it is often difficult to determine the optimum manner of meeting the short-term cash needs. In this paper, this short-term financing problem under certainty is formulated as a mathematical model and solved through the use of a general linear programming routine. Optimum solutions are determined for a number of cases and the general form of the solution is discussed. The paper includes an analysis based on marginal costs and a discussion of the short-term financing problem under uncertainty.