Negative days is the count of days within a statement period on which the account’s end-of-day balance was below zero. It’s a blunt but powerful cash-flow read: how many days did this business literally run out of money?
Underwriters pair negative days with NSF count and average daily balance. A file can post a healthy monthly deposit total and still show a pattern of month-end negative days — a sign the merchant is living deposit-to-deposit with no cushion, which makes a fixed daily remittance risky.
Why it’s a buy-box line
- Few or zero negative days supports A/B paper and larger advances.
- A cluster of negative days late in the month flags thin end-of-cycle liquidity.
- Rising negative days month over month is a deterioration signal even if deposits hold.
How we compute it: negative days are counted from the reconciled daily balance series — the same carry-forward series used for ADB — so the number reflects real end-of-day balances, not a guess. On combined statements the count is scoped per account.