What Is Days Payable Outstanding (DPO)? The AP Metric That Actually Matters

Days Payable Outstanding measures how long a company takes to pay its bills — and it is one of the most misinterpreted AP metrics in finance. Longer is not always better, shorter is not always worse, and industry benchmarks are useless without context. Here is what DPO actually measures, how to calculate it correctly, and what a healthy DPO looks like in construction specifically.