Background

Over the past four years, this IT business’s revenues had grown £500k to £3.5 million.

They made money by selling hardware, software, and IT services both in the UK and abroad, with a high proportion of repeat business.

They needed funding to support cash flow and enable further growth while they waited for their invoices to be paid.

Funding request

The business had in place a selective invoice discounting facility, where a lender advanced them money from some of their unpaid invoices. This helped to maintain good cash flow, but the lender had reduced the limit on the size of the invoices they could submit from £500k to £350k.

When they applied for whole turnover invoice discounting (also known as whole ledger finance), they were rejected by the lender. This was due to having a complex revenue stream, with both products and services, and also international clients that the lender had little experience dealing with.

The lender had recently increased automation in its customer service operations, leaving the IT business feeling frustrated and undervalued. The business owners no longer felt like they were getting good value for money from the funding and the lender and wanted to look at alternatives.

How we helped them RISE

Our team quickly identified that the main obstacle to securing funding was how lenders perceived the business’s risk, specifically, their confidence in whether clients would reliably pay their invoices.

Due to the company’s multiple revenue streams spanning domestic and international sales, its accounting was complex. This made it challenging to reassure lenders, even though the financial data clearly showed a strong track record of timely payments. The key was presenting this information in a way that lenders could easily interpret and trust.

With decades of experience working with lenders, we helped the business refine its financial presentation, making its stability and reliability unmistakable. Rather than returning to their existing lender, the client opted for a whole turnover invoice discounting facility from an alternative lender we sourced, one that better understood and supported their funding needs.

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