Your worst business nightmare just occurred. You got the order/contract! Now what?!

Purchase order financing is a great tool for firms that have unusual purchase order and contract sales financing needs but are potentially unable to access traditional financing via banks or their own capital resources within their firm. How does trade finance P O financing work, does your firm qualify, what are the costs, and how does it work? Great questions, now let’s explore some answers!

Typically Canadian firms looking for this type of financing are distributors, manufacturers, or perhaps wholesalers. A variety of industries in Canada have access to this type of financing, but those certainly tend to be the typical firms needing assistance.

Your need for purchase order financing arises out of what we call the classic working capital gap. What do we mean by that? It’s a case of your suppliers requiring payment either up front or within 30 days, with your firm unable to generate those funds for payment and therefore unable to fill large purchase order and contracts in your favor. Your supplier is asking your for payment in advance or 30 days, and you wont receive payment for at least 60-90 days, perhaps more depending on your build cycle, etc.

Naturally you don’t want to turn down orders or lose competitive market position.

The obvious solution for low cost large amounts of funds are Canadian chartered banks, but our observation is that many firms simply cant satisfy the banks requirements for this type of financing to occur. If your firm is growing, profitable, has a clean balance sheet and strong historical cash flows and history you of course have a solid chance of meeting bank requirements, however that typically is not the case, certainly in the amount of clients we talk to who are looking for alternatives to their growth challenge!

When you access p o financing you can have comfort that your suppliers will be paid, and at the same time you generally have access to all the funds you need. Typical purchase order financing applications take anywhere from 2-4 weeks to complete and involve basic financial due diligence on your firms ability to fulfill the order, who your customer is (they must be credit worthy), and your proper supplier sources must be identified and vetted. It’s as simple as that.

So what are the basic pre requisites for a solid P.O. Financing deal? Naturally your company must be in possession of a contract or order that is not cancelable by your client. The P O finance firm arranges to pay your suppliers directly, that alleviates all you cash flow and working capital concerns. The transaction is completed when you ship the goods and your receivables are generated on the sale. It is at this time the purchase order finance firm expects to be paid, and this is traditionally handled by your firms monetizing of its receivable via a bank or factoring facility. Factoring facilities are great partners to the P O financing strategy, because use of them guarantees payment to your P O firm.

Let’s cover off a couple tips and secrets around the cost of purchase order financing – It generally is in the 2-3% per month range in Canada, and that means you have to have solid gross profit margins in order to be able to sustain the finance charges. But let’s be honest, let’s say your firm has been doing 750k of revenue for the last couple years and you finally get the large order from a major customer for 1 Million dollars. Wouldn’t you give up 2-3 % of your profit margin in order to make one sale which is the equivalent of your entire year’s business? We think you should positively consider that! Clearly the higher cost of this type of financing covers off the complexity and risk that the P O finance firm takes in paying for goods, waiting to get paid, and having the belief that your firm will fulfill the contract order.

It has been our observation with certain clients that your successful completion of a purchase order finance deal typically significantly enhances your relationship with your major suppliers and of course customers, that’s a secret benefit that is intangible but invaluable at the same time.

Is P O financing for everyone. Maybe not. Could it be possibly the solution to major working capital needs if your business is growing and can’t be financed traditionally – we certainly think so? Speak to a trusted, credible and experienced purchase order finance expert to explore your options.

Business financing loans are a line of credit which help people who are in business. There are different kinds of business financing loans that are offered to different lenders either to raise funds or loan capital to your business in order to expand your company.

Although there are many ways also to finance your business and one should have sufficient cash flow within the existing business you have so that the lender will be able to finance the growth of your company by its own means or you can turn to a bank or other financial institutions that can provide different variety of loans.

Having a business financing loan is not as easy since they have some criteria or financing programs where in you meet the following criteria such as:

Your business must have commercial customers
Your business must be established and must have consumers or customers.
They don’t finance on real estate projects
Some of the business financing programs:

Business are available of every size
Easy to obtain
Have many advantages over conventional business loans
Can be set up in a few days
There are some business financial loans that don’t require you to have a good personal credit or showing countless financial statements since their financing program or loan allows being flexible to help your business grow but before looking for a business financing loan, you need to know how business loans work and used.

You can see that there are many sources of financing loans that are geared to types of businesses but the sources have certain criteria for investment and loan but that depend to the area which they participate.

These are some of the areas of Business Financing Loan:

Commercial Property
Start-up Financing for business
Loans for Government
Purchase Order Advances
Leasing Equipment
Commercial Financing
Invoice Factoring
Asset Sales Leaseback
Investment Banking
Angel Investor s which is known as informal investor
Venture Capital known as Private Equity Capital
But private money business financing loan is different since it includes equity loan, hard money as well as private money loans. They limit only to small business investment companies, private investors, business angels, ventures capital firms and commercial lenders.

The loans have two types for you to choose when in regards of terms in payment. There is the short term and as well as long term which suits your budget and you will notice also that there are lots of commercial lenders, business loan brokers and business financing companies had gone out of business due to global crisis and many people were having loans anywhere and everywhere in order to survive.

If you need financing for your business, you need to plan and study hard of it since financial institutions requires business plan that includes detailed start up cost, marketing plans, monthly expenses, projected profit, etc. Remember that having a business one should do hard work, passion, and determination and have dedicated workers who desired to have the business of their boss grow with success.

So If you think that your business is doing good and need some additional capital for expansion, then you need to plan for that and think it over to have a successful business