In e-commerce pre-sales, the “deposit + final-payment” payment structure enables enterprises to record contract liabilities before commodity delivery. Consequently, the design of the final-payment date becomes an institutional variable affecting corporate working capital management. Based on working capital management theory and the contract liability framework under the new revenue standard, this paper treats final-payment date design as a financial decision variable and investigates its influence on contract liability turnover, operating cash flow volatility, and refund risk exposure. Employing a combined methodology of case study and financial indicator analysis, this paper uses the event of adjusting the final-payment date in e-commerce pre-sales as an entry point. Through a comparative analysis of contract liability refund data from companies such as Ziyan Foods and Tianyue Advanced Materials, a financial analytical framework of “payment term design – contract liability turnover – operating cash flow volatility – refund risk” is constructed. On this basis, a financially oriented flexible window scheme for final-payment dates is proposed. Rather than focusing on consumer dissatisfaction, this research explores how e-commerce financial departments can integrate final-payment timing into cash flow forecasting and working capital management, thereby identifying feasible balance points between consumers’ liquidity constraints and corporate capital efficiency.
References
[1] Kuang, Y., Jiang, L. (2023) Managing presales with two payments and return policy when consumers are time‐inconsistent. Production and Operations Management, 32(11), 3594-3613.
[2] Sabauri, L., Vardiashvili, M., Maisuradze, M. (2023) On recognition of contract asset and contract liability in the financial statements. Ekonomisti, 42-49.
[3] Nan, Y., Chen, Y., Nie, T., Du, S. (2023) Supply chain optimization considering consumers’ mental accounting by time dimension in advance selling. Journal of University of Science and Technology of China, 53(8), 0801.
[4] Wang, Z. J., Wang, Z. (2018) The working capital management based on vendor relationship – “icing on the cake” or “timely help”. Nankai Business Review International, 9(2), 199-224.
[5] Cui, C., Qu, Y., Gao, H. (2024) Are investors inattentive to the information content of advance receipts? China Journal of Accounting Studies, 12(2), 419-456.
[6] Napier, C. J., Stadler, C. (2020) The real effects of a new accounting standard: the case of IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers. Accounting and Business Research, 50(5), 474-503.
[7] Alhiniti, Y., Al-Masry, W. A. M. A. (2026) Law and e-commerce: Understanding the legal classifications of electronic stores. Business Resilience and Business Innovation for Sustainability: The Double-Edged Role of Artificial Intelligence and Other Disruptive Technologies, 2761-2775.
[8] Zhang, C., Yuan, Y., Zhang, L., Zhang, J., Huang, W. (2021) A proposed ordering strategy for the retailer in a two tier, advanced payment supply chain. Journal of Industrial and Production Engineering, 38(8), 628-637.
[9] Peng, J., Zhou, Z. (2019) Working capital optimization in a supply chain perspective. European Journal of Operational Research, 277(3), 846-856.
[10] Dahan, M., Nisan, U. (2022) Late payments, liquidity constraints and the mismatch between due dates and paydays. Water Resources Research, 58(1), e2021WR030303.
Share and Cite
Peng, Y., Tang, L., Xie, Y., Wang, Y., Wang, C. (2026) Research on the Impact of E-commerce Pre-sale Final-payment Timing Design on Corporate Working Capital Management: An Analysis Based on Contract Liabilities and Cash Flow. Hong Kong Financial Bulletin, 2(2), 43-50.