Receipts from customers generally exceed payments to customers...

Receipts from customers generally exceed payments to customers otherwise you're losing money? That is the point of running a business.

you're essentially saying the business needs to deliver positive operating cash flow, which it always has since IPO.

i understand the premise but it fundamentally misses a lot of key points. 'Every month' isn't quite true either given some of the items classified as 'current liabilities' may not even be payable for 12 months, for example due in Dec-24, so they have a long time to accrue the cash to pay them.