Nearly 80 percent of companies responding to a recent survey from CFO Research Services say that most or many of their customers are larger than they are, which can certainly make it difficult to negotiate credit terms.

"Unfortunately, there's not a lot that companies with fewer than 100 employees can do against, say, IBM to dictate payment terms," says Andrew Lobsenz, a senior vice president for credit-monitoring firm Dun & Bradstreet. The percentage of business payments that were delinquent (those past due more than 90 days) held steady at around 5 percent for all of 2010, according to D&B research, still high compared with mid-2007, when the rate was around 2 percent.

So what's a finance executive to do to keep on top of working capital?

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