The Five Things Keeping Directors Up at Night: Late Payments

Late payment concerns just hit a five year high.

And here is what makes this one so exhausting. It is not that the money does not exist. It is that someone else is sitting on it. Every single day they hold onto it, you are the one covering the gap. Payroll goes out on your dates. Suppliers expect payment on your terms. Rent does not wait. None of it runs on your client’s timeline. All of it runs on yours.

Most directors respond by chasing harder. More calls, more polite reminders, more carefully worded emails asking for an update. It works sometimes. It also costs time you do not have, chasing money you are already owed, while everything else keeps running regardless.

There is a better way to sit in this.

You can access most of what is owed to you before your client actually pays it, through your own invoices, rather than waiting on someone else’s timeline entirely. Not a loan. Not an overdraft. Your own money, made available to you earlier, secured against the invoices you have already raised and the work you have already done.

Here is the question worth sitting with today. If one of your biggest clients went under tomorrow, whose money is actually at risk? Yours or theirs? If you are not certain of the answer, that is worth finding out before it is ever tested.

Invoice finance answers that question better than any loan does. And here is something most directors do not realise until someone explains it properly. The personal guarantee on an invoice finance facility is significantly safer than the personal guarantee on a standard business loan, because it is backed by real invoices rather than a promise of future performance.

Give me a call and I will walk you through exactly how it works and whether it makes sense for your business right now.

I am Mark Smillie. 07710 466166.