Generally most of the bigger firms enjoy long-term relationships with banks and other investors which make it easy for them to get financial aid during a tight cash flow situation. But smaller businesses find it really hard to get the required credit in time of need. In past few years, business to business cash advance has emerged as the favorite choice of small business owners. The main reasons behind this popularity are instant approval and minimal credit checking involved in the process. Here are various aspects of business cash advances.
The working principle
Advances works in the same manner as that of invoice factoring. The process of invoice factoring involves selling of sales ledger or a specific part of the sales ledger to a group of funders or individual funders. It provides immediate cash to the company and the sales funder gets paid when the pending ledger invoices of the company are settled.
With business funding, the business sells its revenue stream that will be received by future credit card receipts against the business. The process starts by evaluation of sales from credit cards for a given period of time and a certain portion of this amount is paid to the owner as cash advance. The funder receives the money from those sales after they are made.
In both of these cases, there is a fee involved depending on the amount of cash advance which is charged by the funder. Depending upon the terms of the agreement, fee amount and other costs vary accordingly. The rate of interests depends on the level of risk and flexibility offered from the funding group.
Major issues
There are a lot of advantages of businesses using advances as compared to regular bank loans. These are easily available to new businesses and a business need not to have a strong credit history to get approval for business advances. Another important factor is the amount of flexibility offered in business advances. The repayments are generally decided according to the current business and initial payments can be made quickly. The business owner has the advantage of making quick repayments in case of fast business.
But the overall cost of the business advance is much higher than regular bank loans. It is important that small business should consider business advances as initial funding only and these should not be preferred for long term financial requirements. Business funding offers the advantage of quick funding but like any other financial agreement, business owners should not enter into it lightly.
