Abstract:
Decisions around financial management are paradigms and are often encompassed in different sectors of the national and global economy. No different from the others, the fuel retail sector has difficulties with financial management, which is directly linked to the management of its Working Capital (WC). Item that comprises, in accounting, short-term assets that will be converted into cash for the company in the short term (within twelve months). These assets are made up of cash, highly liquid bank accounts, accounts receivable from customers and inventories, all of which have movements in their balances and transact with each other. Studies involving the WC theme always try to uncover, through formulas and indexes, how to equalize all elements so that the company does not have financial problems. However, as there are different variables, this management becomes difficult to predict or plan. Observing the difficulty of financial management at a fuel retail station in the south of Minas Gerais, this work aims to apply Discrete Event Simulation (DES) as a tool in WC management, allowing the generation of Working Capital Needs (WCN) indicators and Liquidity, creating scenarios for analysis and guidance in decision making. DES allows you to simulate and design scenarios with real data, making inferences that can help manage the company's cash flows, with random variations and simulations that can help the manager in decision making, thus contributing to the company's main problem, the lack of resources to honor their short-term debts. This work is justified by adding studies on DES in financial management to the literature, mainly in relation to the WC of gas stations, in addition to contributing with knowledge and possibilities so that entrepreneurs in the segment can improve their company economically and financially. The work achieved its objectives by creating a model capable of generating WCN and Liquidity indicators, allowing the data to be analyzed statistically. The results found indicate that the greatest influence on the company's WCN is the Supplier Payment period, which, if this period is increased by 7 days, can significantly contribute to reducing the WCN. It also suggests that the reduction in the Credit Card Receipt Period, by 15 days, contributes to a reduction in the WCN. Finally, the Customer Payment Profile is the least significant variable that can be used, but as long as it is combined with other changes, such as those mentioned above.