Economists are reporting that the economy is showing signs of recovery. Daily there are reports that the future for business is looking brighter; increased hiring, raises in compensation, etc. but, it will be a steady climb back… not an overnight flip. Business owners need to be aware that, while the business world does seem to be showing improvement, it is still vital that we make savvy business decisions to keep cash flowing and business growing. One method often overlooked, or simply misunderstood, is receivables factoring. If the business owner wants to ensure the viability of their business then it is vital that they address the issue of cash flow. Factoring receivables is an easy way to boost your cash flow to meet needs such as payroll, supply purchasing, and the day-to-day expenses of running a business.

When the business owner sets up their business they have a passion about the goods or services they provide. Seldom does cash flow, invoicing, or past-due collections appear on the business plan. Those items, in truth, are vital to the success of the business. A factoring firm cannot only assist with the immediate needs of cash flow but can often help the business drive their receivable collections. A receivables factoring firm can partner with a small business to be their out-sourced accounts receivable department.

If you, or someone you know, can benefit from the alternate financial offerings a receivables factoring provider has to offer, please contact us to see how we can assist you to grow your business.

When you own your own business and are responsible for driving that business to success, there is a lot riding on you. Is that business the sole provider for your family? Do you have employees? If so, they look to you to make decisions that will drive the business to success. Often times your community may also rely on you; from employer to provider of goods/services necessary to the well-being of the community, your small business has value. When you stop to think about your business and your cash flow do you think “ahhhh…” or “aargh!”?

If you are experiencing the perpetual anxiety side of the ‘business finance’ coin, you are not alone. Whether it is our unsettling economic times or just the normal rhythm of small business, many small business owners are feeling stressed about their cash flow. Luck rarely has anything to do with business success… planning and savvy business decisions have everything to do with your business realizing its full potential.

Frequently business owners live with inconsistent cash flow that often falls short of keeping the business moving forward in the direction of growth. Be it months or years of struggle, frustration, and anxiety, those things sap your potential and energy. When caught up in this cycle it is very difficult to strategize and build you business. If you find that you are caught up in this cycle, consider factoring. Factoring your receivables can release the worry and put you back on the road to business success and growth. American Funding Solutions provides factoring services to meet your cash flow needs. We can work with you when banks may not be able to provide assistance. Our relationship doesn’t rely on how long you have been in business, your person credit, or the credit worthiness of your business. Instead we review the credit worthiness of your customers. Invoice factoring is not a loan… we offer funding based on your receivables. Factoring can be a win/win solution to improve cash flow without going into debt.

In the small business community you will quite often hear the #1 thing that keeps a small business owner up at night is cash flow concerns. Whether supplying goods or services, working with research and development issues, or the decision to have a brick and mortar store; cash flow is the driving concern for most, if not all, business owners. Getting your company operating in the black and keeping it there is no small challenge, especially in the current economic climate.

When confronted with a cash flow short fall the business owner will often seek out financing to help the company over the bump in the road. Financial institutions, such as banks, are normally not able to assist for the short term, especially if the business is a startup or for some other reason not considered credit worthy. The best place to turn for such short term assistance is a receivables factoring provider.  The factoring company is effective at this type of assistance because they are able to leverage a small business’ outstanding receivables to provide cash, as well as offering efficient management of outstanding invoices.

If you have additional questions about how factoring can assist you in driving your business forward please contact us. We have great funding options to the standard loan options that will allow you to keep the cash flowing and your business growing without the liability of a loan. Put your receivables to work for you!

1. Your customer places an order for goods or services from you.
2. You provide the invoice for said goods/services to American Funding Solutions.
3. You receive funding, usually within 24 hours.
4. You utilize those funds to keep your cash flow moving, so you can continue to provide goods/services to your customers.
5. American Funding Solutions partners with you to drive your collections.

We at American Funding Solutions are a group of professionals passionate about helping you build your business. We are experts in our field and we treat our clients with integrity, honesty, and fairness. Our goal is to provide excellent service to allow our clients to grow their businesses. To that end, we supply our clients with not only the cash flow to keep their business prospering, but also knowledge about our products to allow them to make savvy financial decisions about how to best utilize our services.

A growing business’ most valuable asset may be their accounts receivable. Traditional banking institutions generally do not often recognize those types of assets as credit-worthy. With American Funding Solutions the business owner is able to utilize just those types of assets to secure the cash flow to allow them to take control of their business and the cash flow available to them. We can meet your financial needs to procure payment discounts offered by your suppliers, make payroll, and a host of other things to keep your business growing.

I recently read a funny quote, “As a small business owner, I sleep like a baby. I go to bed at 8 PM and wake up at midnight screaming.” I don’t know who said that, but I can relate, and I bet I’m not the only one.  Here is a list of some of the ‘buttons’ that cause entrepreneurs sleepless nights.

1) Cash flow – We all know that ‘Cash is King’. Most small businesses that go out of business do so because of one little issue; they ran out of cash. If you cannot keep the cash flowing then you will struggle to keep the business open, much less growing. In order to keep track of your cash flow you will need to educate yourself on how to read a cash flow statement. Keep an eye on, and consistently review the things that affect your cash flow.

2) Help in slow cash flow periods – There are options to help if you find that your cash flow is not keeping up with business. If you hit a rough spot, there are financial alternatives such as factoring receivables. Firms such as American Funding Solutions offer alternative financial solutions to the standard banking loan options. If you have not been in business long enough to establish credit worthiness, by traditional banking standards, then receivables factoring may be your answer to slow cash flow. By factoring your receivables you can have funds readily available for keeping the cash flowing and your business growing

3) Generating revenue – it is essential for the well being of your business, to implement a method that consistently creates customers for your goods or services. Networking, social media, marketing and advertising are just a few of the tools that need to be in your revenue generating arsenal. It is imperative that you turn prospects into customers, customers into fans, and fans into loyal referral sources.

4) Billing your clients – how many times have you awakened in the middle of the night with the realization that you forgot to invoice your client/customer? It is necessary to implement a method that will allow you to regularly bill your clients. If you are not collecting at the time of service, you need to establish a practice of billing at specific intervals. I find it works for me to invoice my clients on the 15^th and 30^th of every month. I simply put a recurring reminder on my calendar to review my client list for invoicing twice a month.

Unfortunately, in our sluggish economy, slow paying customers have become more the norm than ever before. Like it or not, slow payments seem to be here to stay. As a rule, commercial clients take 45 – 90 days to pay their outstanding invoices. For many small to medium sized businesses this is a crippling financial reality, especially if that business is in the start up or growth phase of building the business.

Most often, when faced with a cash flow short fall, the business owner will go to their local bank to apply for a business loan. Banks are a great resource for the business owner but, when the business is new or has not established their credit worthiness, they will find that the application for funds will likely be rejected. There are alternatives to the normal banking resources. Many start-up businesses are not familiar with alternative lenders providing accounts receivable factoring.

If an entrepreneur finds themselves in a cash flow crunch and cannot wait the 45 – 90 days to receive payment from customers, there is a solution. Accounts receivable factoring eliminates the inconvenience of waiting an extended period of time for payment. Factoring provides the business owner with the cash flow to meet overhead needs, pay employees, and generally keep the business growing and moving forward.

Accounts receivable factoring can be easily integrated into any business model, allowing the business owner to receive funds, usually within 24 hours. It is easy to qualify for, as the business is ‘banking’ on the credit worthiness of their customers. Once a business has established their own credit worthiness they can establish a financial relationship with a local banker, but, in the interim, factoring can buy them the time they need to build their business’ financial reputation.

Now, more than ever, it is imperative that you, as a small business owner, are keeping up with the current trends. To ensure success and growth you need to continual push yourself, and consequently your business, to the next level. In today’s fast paced business environment business owners are faced with the choice of forging ahead or falling behind.

Social media refers to the tools that can help you move up in the search engines and is currently all the buzz… LinkedIn, Twitter, Face Book, and don’t forget blogging, have taken the business world by storm. As we have all become more connected, simply having a web site is no longer enough. You have to grow with the trends in social media if you want to grow your business. By including social media tools in your arsenal, you are able to reach your potential consumer virally. That is to say, your connections can help you spread the word about your goods and/or services.

We at American Funding Solutions care about the financial health of our clients and the business community. To that end, we like to not only discuss the financial options that we can offer growing businesses, but also encourage business owners to work smarter, not harder. If you are not utilizing the plethora of social media tools at your fingertips, we encourage you to take a tour of what the web has to offer. LinkedIn, Twitter, Face Book and blog posting services like Word Press, are free and offer the business owner a tremendous return on investment for time spent posting on the web.

Invoice or receivables factoring is a tool that will benefit any business or entity which sells goods or services and waits for invoice payment.   Factoring is a tool through which businesses can get immediate money from a factoring company by selling their accounts receivable at a discounted rate. The discounted rate charged by a factoring company, is similar, and can be compared to offering your customers a discount to pay your invoice quickly, for example offering your customer payment terms of 2% for payment in 10 days.

Factoring services can be advantageous to various businesses such as staffing companies, janitorial service providers, web designers, etc.  Factoring is extremely effective to help small businesses manage their payroll demands.  Factoring services can provide cash flow assistance to both product based businesses and service providers.  Any firm that needs financial assistance should consider invoices factoring as a way to improve operational cash flow.

Often times start-up businesses, or businesses that have not established a banking relationship, find that they have difficulty obtaining financing through the normal channels.  Don’t take “No” for an answer; Get creative!

Factoring is a perfect fit for such businesses.  The approval process with a factor is based on the credit worthiness of your business’ customers, not the credit strength of your business.    Factoring can often help your business grow and will set the stage for a banking relationship. This is one of the greatest advantages of the receivables factoring industry; offering a creative solution to keep the cash flowing while building business credibility.

Accounts receivable factoring is not necessarily a new idea, but with the economic challenges of our times, factoring is becoming a common solution to improve slow cash flow among business owners.   It does not matter whether the company is small or large, start-up or well-established; any business that could benefit from improved cash flow by receiving immediate payment of their invoices should consider receivable factoring as an option.

In a recent report out from Dun and Bradstreet, the credit reporting agency disclosed the trend is up for businesses taking more than 90 days to settle their payables. In December, the number of invoices outstanding for greater than 90 days had increased by 20%. Oddly enough, smaller firms are actually settling their accounts more rapidly than their larger counterparts. Businesses with 5-20 employees took an average of 50 days to pay, while companies with more than 500 employees took 60 days or more.

Small businesses generally have more cash flow challenges and, as a result, need a way to address this receivables shortfall. One valuable tool for the small to medium-sized business with cash flow pains is the use of receivables factoring, also called debt factoring.

When a small business factors their receivables, they receive an advance on their outstanding invoices to obtain working capital. As we all know, cash flow is the life blood of any business; large or small. Slow payments can seriously hamper the cash flow of a business, crippling the business. As long as larger companies drag out their remittance process small businesses will need to be creative in the way they approach their cash flow issues. We at American Funding Solutions offer a variety of financial options to help the small to medium business keep their cash flowing, enabling them to make payroll, receive vendor discounts, purchase supplies, etc.

1) You deliver the goods/services to your customer/client.

2) You create an invoice > submit it to your customer and the finance company.

3) The finance company will verify the invoice and wire the bulk of your funds into your bank account.

4) The finance company waits for payment from your client/customer.

5) The finance company receives payment for the invoice.

6) Reserve funds are disbursed back to you, less the discount fee.

You receive cash in about 24 hours after submitting your invoices. No need to wait 30, 60, or 90 days for your customers to pay! The more business you do, the more working capital is available. Funds are virtually unlimited!

It’s an easy, safe, and fast financing tool to provide working capital for growing your business.