Accounts Payable Turnover Ratio is a short-term liquidity measure which is used to calculate the rate at which a company pays off its suppliers. Accounts payable turnover ratio is computed by taking the total purchases done by suppliers and dividing it by the average accounts payable amount during the similar period.

The measure explains investors how many times per period the company pays its average payable amount. For instance, if the company makes $100 million in purchases from suppliers in a given year and at any given point owns an average accounts payable of $20 million then the accounts payable turnover ratio for the given period is 5 ($100 million/$20 million). If the turnover ratio is reducing from one period to another, this is a signal that the company is taking long time to pay off its suppliers than it was earlier. The opposite is true when the turnover ratio is rising, which shows that the company is paying of suppliers at a quicker rate.