Invoice purchasing and invoice borrowing

What is the difference between invoice purchasing and invoice financing?

Invoice purchase and invoice discounting - same but different

Invoice borrowing means that you can borrow money against the security of your customer invoices. Invoice purchasing is a good way to raise cash, for example when you can't get a loan from the bank or when you are expanding and need to temporarily boost your liquidity.

What is the cost of invoice purchasing and invoice discounting?

Typically, invoice discounting allows you to borrow between 70-80% of the invoice amount while invoice purchase offers you 100% of the invoice amount minus the fee. The fee is often between 1.5 - 3% of the invoice amount. The interest rate is based on the loan-to-value ratio and invoice risk.

Things that negatively affect interest rates are

• If your company has payment notes
• If your company has made a loss
• If your company has changed representatives in recent years

Things that have a positive impact on interest rates are

• Higher monthly volume
• Creditworthy beneficiaries
• Solid history

We have no volume requirements, but we can often find cheaper solutions for larger volumes.

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Alternatives to factoring

Two alternatives to factoring could be a business loan for larger investments, an overdraft facility for cash flow or a business card for everyday expenses.

Reverse factoring

Like regular factoring but in reverse?

Normally, a company can sell its invoices to a finance company that pays the money directly. In reverse factoring, supplier financing or reverse factoring, the debtor is the initiator - not the supplier (the one selling the invoice).

Why do you want reverse factoring?

In most cases, the debtor wants longer payment terms.

How reverse charge services work

It starts with the debtor contacting the factoring company or finance company to see if they can get the invoice debts to their suppliers financed. The factoring company then makes a credit assessment of the debtor. An approval for reverse factoring, supplier financing or reverse factoring is only given if the debtor has a very good payment capacity and creditworthiness. This is because most factoring companies and finance companies, but also banks, guarantee non-recourse factoring for all invoices they purchase.

If an agreement is reached, the company receives a credit up to a certain amount. The agreement must be signed between the company receiving the credit, the supplier and the factoring company.

As a company, you get a kind of revolving credit similar to an overdraft facility. This is usually a cheaper financing solution, but it is relatively difficult and unusual to resolve. The positive aspect of reverse factoring is that the supplier will always be paid by the factoring company and this therefore reduces the risk of the arrangement.

Challenges and laws

There are often problems, especially in the construction industry, around payment times. Many large companies have long payment terms that put smaller subcontractors at a disadvantage as they have to spend a lot of money on staff, materials, vehicles, machinery, etc.

As of March 1, 2022, companies with more than 249 employees will be required to report their payment terms to their subcontractors.

Companies are obliged to provide this information:

• The average contractual payment period
• The average actual payment period
• The proportion of invoices paid after the end of the agreed payment period

Payment times must be reported separately for subcontractors as well:

• 0-9 employees
• 10-49 employees
• 50-249 employees
  

If your company uses reverse factoring, you have to report these data separately. This means that you have to report nine additional data if you use reverse factoring for all three size categories of companies.