Calculate the short-term coverage ratio, a liquidity ratio that measures a company’s ability to pay off its short-term obligations with its operating cash flow.

The short-term coverage ratio is calculated by dividing operating cash flow by short-term debt. It assesses the company’s ability to meet its short-term obligations using its operating cash flow.

The formula is as follows:

\[\text{Short Term Coverage Ratio} = \text{Cash Flow from Operations} / \text{Short Term Debt}\]

Also known as: short-term debt coverage.

No programming experience? With the Finance Toolkit MCP server, AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT can calculate the Short Term Coverage Ratio for you. Just ask in plain English.

Calculate the Short Term Coverage Ratio in Python

The Short Term Coverage Ratio is available in the Ratios module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_short_term_coverage_ratio as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Toolkit

toolkit = Toolkit(["AAPL", "TSLA"], api_key="FINANCIAL_MODELING_PREP_KEY")

toolkit.ratios.get_short_term_coverage_ratio()

Which returns:

  2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
AAPL -4.7495 -3.9423 -4.1291 -4.1839 -4.5755
TSLA -4.882 27.4701 4.9042 3.7675 4.0998

Parameters

get_short_term_coverage_ratio accepts the following parameters:

  • rounding (int, optional): The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to 4.
  • growth (bool, optional): Whether to calculate the growth of the ratios. Defaults to False.
  • lag (int | str, optional): The lag to use for the growth calculation. Defaults to 1.
  • standardize (bool, optional): Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False.
  • trailing (int): Defines whether to select a trailing period. E.g. when selecting 4 with quarterly data, the TTM is calculated.

The Ratios module page introduces the module, and the sidebar lists all of its functions.

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