What Is Invoice Financing?

Different industries have their own standard terms both freelancers and the self-employed need to adhere to. For small firms, a large gap between financial receipts can be catastrophic. Invoice finance for a small business is used to establish money flow and not interrupt activities due to the lack of funds. Read below about what it is, how it works, and what benefits it brings.

How Does Invoice Financing Work?

Invoice financing is a convenient tool for establishing regular cash receipts to your account, even if clients have not yet paid. Its essence lies in involving a third party in your relationship with orderers, which acts as a sponsor. You give finance providers or factoring companies invoices samples for which you wait for payment; they give you a large part of this amount. Sometimes, it can reach 90% of the total sum.

That is, invoice finance meaning implies that you take money from a third party. However, it doesn’t mean that customers don’t need to pay. In general terms, the process of using this tool is as follows:

1. You complete an order, provide goods and services to clients, and issue a bill through, for example, the SaldoInvoice platform. Send this paper to both your customer and finance provider.
2. The specified percentage of the invoice is credited to your account from the provider, and you can continue working with other orderers and projects.
3. The debtor makes payment within the period specified in a contract, which is credited to the provider’s account. You get the rest of the money minus the invoice financing costs for the third party’s work.

Even though contacting a factoring company requires paying interest, the benefit of getting the money quickly tends to outweigh it.

Advantages of Invoice Discounting

The main benefit of invoice loans is that you can get them quickly. Depending on the agreement terms, it usually happens within two days. You receive money and can immediately use it for the business development or the implementation of another project instead of waiting for receipts from a client for 30 or more days. It reduces your downtime and the likelihood of losses.

Since you can sell invoices for cash and not wait for money from orderers, you get the opportunity to offer customers more generous terms. It makes your company more competitive. You maintain mutually beneficial relationships with clients and, at the same time, don’t stop work in other areas. Besides, the larger the sum in your sample invoice law firm or any other company issue, the bigger loan you can get.

Although the advantages of this tool are impressive, don’t forget about the disadvantages. Remember that this money is not entirely yours, so overleveraging should be avoided. Depending on the specific provider, invoice factoring costs and fees can be pretty high in total and amount to about 30% of the entire sum. If your debtor fails to pay, you will have to compensate for these losses from your own funds. So, you’re not protected from non-payment risks.

When considering this tool, you should weigh all the invoice discounting advantages and disadvantages and the possible consequences for your business.

Invoice Financing vs. Factoring

Factoring and financing are largely similar concepts. You receive payment on the issued invoice and pay interest in both cases. However, the first option involves providing you with most of the amount, but at the same time requires a larger percentage of fees. You don’t need to monitor the receipt of payment from customers; the factoring company will handle it. Its specialists will contact the debtors if they don’t pay on time. The definition of invoice discounting (also called financing) includes slightly lower repayments and fees. At the same time, the responsibility for tracking cash receipts from debtors falls on your shoulders.