Discounted payback period definition
/What is the Discounted Payback Period?
The discounted payback period is the period of time over which the cash flows from an investment pay back the initial investment, factoring in the time value of money. It is primarily used to calculate the projected return from a proposed capital investment opportunity.
Advantages of the Discounted Payback Period
The discounted payback period adds discounting to the basic payback period calculation, thereby greatly increasing the accuracy of its results. It is significantly more accurate than the basic payback period formula, which can be seriously inaccurate when the cash flow period is quite long or the discount rate is high.
Disadvantages of the Discounted Payback Period
The key disadvantage of the discounted payback period is that it suffers from a higher level of complexity than the standard payback period. The standard payback period calculation is intended to be quite simple, and can be derived with minimal calculations. This is not the case when discounting is introduced to the formulation.
Formulation of the Discounted Payback Period
The basic formula to determine the payback period is:
Amount invested ÷ Average annual cash flows = Payback period
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The discounted payback period is instead derived by following these steps:
Create a table in which is listed the expected cash outflow related to the investment in Year 0.
In the following lines of the table, enter the cash inflows expected from the investment in each subsequent year.
Multiply the expected annual cash inflows in each year in the table by the applicable discount rate, using the same interest rate for all of the periods in the table. No discount rate is applied to the initial investment, since it occurs at once.
Create a column on the far right side of the table that lists the cumulative discounted cash flow for each year. The calculation in this final column is to add back the discounted cash flow in each period to the remaining negative balance from the preceding period. The balance is initially negative because it includes the cash outflow to fund the project.
When the cumulative discounted cash flow becomes positive, the time period that has passed up until that point represents the payback period.
To make the calculation even more accurate, include in subsequent periods any additional cash outflows to pay for the project, such as may be associated with upgrades or maintenance.
The Difference Between the Payback Period and Discounted Payback Period
The payback period is the amount of time it takes for the cash flows from a project to pay back the initial investment. This is not the same as the discounted payback period, where those cash flows are discounted back to their present value before the payback calculation is made. Because no discounting is applied to the basic payback calculation, it always returns a payback period that is shorter than what would be obtained with the discounted payback period calculation.
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