December 4, 2019
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Factoring and PO Financing: Working Together to Fund Your Business
There are many different ways to fund your business out there, but choosing the correct funding method for your business can sometimes be difficult. What makes it tricky is that you can only work with a single funding source. Since you don't know what the future holds for your business, being tied down to funding method that meets the needs of your business today, doesn't mean that it will meet your needs in 6 months or a year, especially if your business is growing. However, there are two funding methods that can be combined together and scale at the same rate as your growing business, they are accounts receivable factoring and purchase order financing.
Traditionally, getting a line of credit from a bank has been the "go to" method for funding a small business. Of course, it has always been a slow process, and qualifying for a line of credit has never been easy small business owners. However, there has always been one very significant problem with a bank line of credit, that is the bank looks only at what you have done, and not at what your business will be able to do in the future. As a result, a line of credit almost always will meet your current needs, but as your business starts to grow, a line of credit can actually restrict how much you can grow. To make matters worse, even if other funding options become available to you, in order to work with them you would have to pay off your and close your line of credit with the bank.
Finding a funding method that can actually grow with your business is crucial for anyone who has large aspirations for their business. A good solution to this problem is factoring. Accounts receivable factoring is a very unique funding method in that it is not a loan, it does not take your credit into account, and the amount of funds available scales with your growing business. The way factoring works is quite simple, if you business invoices other businesses and offers them net payment terms, such as 30 days to pay, then you can sell those invoices to your factoring company and get paid on them 30 days or ealier or more. Because your factoring is purchasing your receivables, you are not taking on any debt and it is your customers who are responsible for paying back your factoring company. This means that credit decisions are not based on your credit, but rather on your customers' good credit. It also means that as your business and receivables grow, the amount of funding you receive from your factoring company also grows with it.
Of course, while you can use the funds you receive from factoring to purchase more product and take on larger orders, it is possible that if you received an extremely large order, say from Walmart or Target, the funds you receive through factoring may not be enough to pay your suppliers for this very large order. In situations like this, you will probably need purchase order financing. Now just like a bank loan or line of credit, if you are factoring your receivables then you won't be eligible for other sources of funding. However, if you work with a factoring company that also offers purchase order financing, then you will be able to get funded for your receivables 30 days earlier, and receive a loan so that you can pay your suppliers when you receive a very large order. As a result, when choosing a factoring company, it is very important to consider all the services they offer because you never know what you might need in the future.
If you are wonderng how factoring and PO financing can work together, it is really quite simple. You provide your factoring company with a PO and tell them how much money you need. They then provide you with the funds neccesary to pay your suppliers. Then once the order is produced and received, you ship it to your customer and invoice them as usual. At that time you provide a copy of the invoice to your factoring company just as you normally would when you factor an invoice. Your factoring company will purchase the invoice, apply a portion of it towards the loan they gave you, and fund you the remaining balance.
At DSA Factors we are proud to offer our clients both accounts receivable factoring and purchase order financing. While for the majority of our clients factoring is more than sufficient in providing them with the funds they need to run their business, we have been able to help many of our clients with purchase order financing as well. Purchase order financing has been most beneficial to our clients when they receive a large order from a big box store, or when they are trying to get a large order into their factory prior to Chinese New Year. If you have big plans for the future of your business, give DSA Factors a call today to learn about how accounts receivable factoring and purchase order financing can give your small business the funding it needs both now and in the future.
