Managing Business Cash Flow Using Invoice Factoring

Don't just think about raising capital and generating revenue in your business because it is just as important to think about managing your company's cash flow. And during tough economic times, or a recession, one of the tactics that can help small businesses is called invoice factoring.

Exactly what does managing your cash flow mean? Basically this means that you need to spend the time to figure out how to manage your money and how it's spent. Get the biggest return on investment for the time and money that you spend for your business.

The recent economic downturn has caused many businesses to cut back in the area of spending altogether. It has been proven that investments such as marketing, when done right, will generate more business for your company. You cannotgenerate the cash flow required to grow your business if you do not have the funds for marketing from your clients. This is known as managing your cash flow towards profitability.

Did you know that an age old strategy called accounts receivable factoring, or invoice factoring, can help your business and its cash flow? In order to grow your business, factoring invoices that are 30-60 or 90 days out will help you get these funds in earlier. You could then spend on catching up on bills, paying employees, hiring, and marketing or advertising. Then you can watch the new business leads start to come in. This spending will return the amount invested while providing additional revenues, then these profits can be put back into your company to once again generate more business via factoring.

Cash flow is money that helps pay for production, supplies, overhead expenses, equipment and other necessities. Small businesses typically learn from their mistakes in their earlier years, but in today's economy, there is often not enough time to wait in order to turn a profit.

Following are a few tips for managing your cash flow and being more successful in your small business:

1) Make sure to pay your vendors with a credit card because it gives you more time to sell more inventory and collect from your customers and then pay the bill.
2) If you pay a vendor 30 days after you make a purchase, and you have 20 days before you have to pay the credit card bill to avoid interest charges, meaning you have almost 50 days.
3)Accept credit cards from your customers, even though you must pay a credit card processing fee for each customer transaction. Fees can be up to three percent of the sale orders from online.

Factoring will help you get your funds faster, then pay your bills on time, saving you more in interest fees. Just make sure that you invoice your customers in a timely fashion, because the faster you send out an invoices, the sooner you're likely to be paid by that customer. Since invoices are usually due in 60 or 90 days, think seriously about using invoice factoring to improve your cash flow.


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Kristin Gabriel is a writer who works with The Interface Financial Group (IFG), North America's largest alternative funding source for small business. The company provides short-term financial resources including invoice factoring, serving clients in more than 30 industries in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. As a factoring company, IFG offers expertise in accounting, finance, law, marketing and banking.