Answering Questions About Factoring

Today we are going to answer questions about factoring – receivables financing. These are the questions our students ask us most frequently. We hope the information will be helpful.

Question #1. What is factoring?

In simple terms, factoring is the purchase by a factoring company of your existing invoices. This ensures that you don’t have to wait for payment from your customers. It will arrive within 24 hours.
The main reason why many trucking companies use factoring is because the wait for money from customers is too long. It can be 30. 60 and sometimes even 90 days.

How much factoring to use is up to you. There are no restrictions in this matter.

Thanks to factoring, your trucking company will have a relatively larger cash flow at its disposal than your competitors. This, in turn, will allow you to meet your obligations to your employees on time and constantly expand your customer base.

Question #2. How does accounts receivable financing work?

This process can be pictured as follows:

1. You provide a service for a customer. For example, you deliver cargo from point A to point B.
2. You generate an invoice for the client, but you do not send it to the client, but to the factoring company.
3. You receive a portion of the payment from the factoring company.Most often the transfer of money takes no more than a day.
4. The factoring company receives 100% of the amount from your client.
5. The factoring company pays you the rest of the amount. The factoring company takes a percentage of the money as profit.

Question #3. What kind of companies is factoring good for?

Factoring is good for absolutely all companies. It doesn’t matter the industry or the size. Because of its specificity, receivables financing has become most popular in such areas of the economy as:

• trucking;
• industrial production;
• oil and gas service;
• medicine;
• HR;
• public procurement, etc.

Question #4. How much does it cost to finance receivables?

As mentioned above, the profit of the factoring company is made up of factoring fees from each account. The amount of fees varies and depends on a number of factors. So, some factoring companies charge only the total amount, which is calculated on the number of invoices per month of the client and the creditworthiness of the client’s clients. There are also factoring companies that charge additional fees. This money goes to pay for bank transfers and other operating expenses.

Thus, the main criterion for choosing a factoring company is the amount of commission. Be sure to study all the terms and conditions of cooperation. Unfortunately, some factoring service providers hide additional fees.