May 4. The April report of the Credit Managers’ Index improved slightly to 53.9, above “contraction territory,” according to the National Association of Credit Management. “It would appear that a collapsed energy sector, winter worries and trepidation regarding dollar values and the interest rate weighed pretty heavily on previous months,” said Chris Kuehl, NACM economist.

“But most of these shouldn’t be issues by the summer.”

Kuehl has revised some of the data accumulated during January and February, hence the improvement in April is small.In the combined manufacturing and service sectors, the index of favorable factors increased from 58.3 in March to 59.8 in April. The categories of sales, new credit applications, dollar collections and amount of credit extended all showed increases. The index of unfavorable factors decreased slightly from 50.1 in March to 50.0 in April. Dollar amount beyond terms increased, while rejection of credit applications, disputes, dollar amount of customer deductions and filings for bankruptcies all decreased. Accounts placed for collection remained unchanged from March to April at 49.8.

“This is a month with some mixed messages,” said Kuehl. “The year-over-year trend overall remained about as it has been and still seems to be a little volatile. Thus far, nearly all the blame can be laid at the feet of the index of unfavorable factors … Favorable factors are performing well as a group, but there are just too many unfavorable categories in the 40s right now.”

For a full breakdown of the manufacturing and service sector data and graphics, click here for the complete April 2015 report http://web.nacm.org/CMI/PDF/CMIcurrent.pdf.