Invoice Factoring Calculator

Our web-site offers a number of commercial calculators that help our visitors work out the potential costs of various business loans.

The latest is an Invoice Finance Calculator that will give an illustration of costs and how much cash flow could be increased by based on turnover.

Remember to qualify for a factoring facility a company must trade with other businesses and offer credit terms.

Eland Business Services Limited are specialist Factoring Finance Brokers in the UK.

Bridging loans and buy to let investments

A news report today says that experienced buy to let investors are using bridging loans to take advantage of "distressed residential & commercial propery sales". Demand for bridging finance has increased by over 200% over the last 9 months, apparently. We think this probably means enquiries rather than completions based on the low loan to values on offer by the larger bridging lenders. However we are positive that the main thrust of the article with regard to experienced landlords is without doubt true.

As commercial loan specialists we can help with all short term bridging requirements and arrange the exit too! Visit our web site for more information and don't forget to check out our latest buy-to-let mortgage deals while you are there.

Upgraded Commercial Mortgage Calculator

We have upgraded and improved the results from our Commercial Mortgage Loan Calculator as a free benefit for all our web site visitors.

As well as returning the costs for the mortgage interest rate input, the calculator now also gives an example of the costs if interest rates were to rise or fall by 2%, subject to a minimum rate of 1%.

Are The UK Banks Playing Fair?

It seems perverse that the main banks are calling in overdrafts or imposing arbitary credit limits for say an invoice factoring facility on businesses that are growing. This is despite being rescued by the taxpayer (some of them at least), on the condition that they lend "normally", whatever that means.

In fact one of those rescued banks has in fact withdrawn a commercial loan offer for a MBO at the very last moment due to "market conditions". This is for a business that should trade well and actually grow in the hard times that face us.

Yes, there are in fact many companies that will grow even during a recession! It's perhaps too early in the rescue process to pass judgement on the banks, so let's hope they don't make things much worse than they need to be!

Business Leasing - A 100% Commercial Loan

When searching for Commercial Loans to raise capital for your business the closest you can get to a 100% finance option is Business Leasing! Typically one monthly rental payment suffices as a full deposit to purchase that new asset such as equipment, plant or machinery. The cost of installation, maintenance and warranty could be added to the loan too!

If your company needs new equipment then business leasing could be beneficial. Some of the circumstances where leasing could be the logical choice are:-

• You don't have the cash to buy your new equipment but need that asset today.


• You do have the cash, but reducing your working capital may compromise your business.


• You don't need new plant or machinery but you do have exisiting assets that have a good residual value against which a sale and business leaseback finance facility could be utilised.


• Because you can fully offset monthly payments against tax, it makes commercial sense to lease for your business.


• Your business assets have a short useful life span and need to be replaced regularly.

For more information we recommend further reading at our specialist Leasing Finance pages.

Can a Bridging Loan Really Complete in Less than 24 Hours?

Most bridging lenders emphasise their speed of service when advertising short term loans. Providing funds within 24-48 hours from application to completion shows the flexibility of non-status bridging loan products and the providers. Can a property deal really be financed in such a short time-scale? Well, the answer is yes, but I wouldn't bank on it!

To achieve such a fast loan completion much of the background work needs to be already available, such as a property valuation that is acceptable to the potential bridging lender with most of the necessary legal work ready and waiting at your solicitors, i.e. search, title deeds etc. Representatives of both the lender and borrowers need to be in a position to move quickly. Even when everything is available things can still go wrong, for example, an unexpected question arises from the documentation provided.

Our simple recommendation is not to get into the position of needing a bridging loan in such a short timescale, even where a more relaxed 5-10 day timeframe is available, the unexpected can cause delays. Where a customer needs to raise cash and a high speed bridging finance solution is the correct loan option then the borrower should minimise the risk of delay by keeping in control of what is in their own domain i.e. own solicitors and providing all requested information at the start of the process as delay here can extend time to completion resulting in a missed deadline.

If you need finance quickly then a good bridging loan broker should be able to help reduce the potential for delays.

More Commercial Finance News

One of the main unsecured Payroll Finance Lenders in the UK temporarily stepped out of the market place last week leaving just one active lender. This payroll lender currently expects to return once new funds have been raised, maybe in a couple of months.

UK Businesses in their quest to raise working capital are increasingly turning to equipment leasing and more specifically selling and leasing back existing assets. This financing method is typically a much easier way to generate cash for a company and expect requests for leasing to increase in popularity over the coming months. Of course all the main benefits of leasing such as the tax advantages are the same whether equipment is new or re-financed!

Property Development Funding - 100% Funds available in the UK

Many UK property development lenders in the highly geared loan market are now sitting on their hands and not lending. However 100% funding is still available although severely restricted in supply. One of our 100% residential property development loan lenders has an appetite and positive lending attitude for part completed developments bought below market value from receivers.

If you are a UK developer who has identified such a property based opportunity then we would like to hear from you via our main web-site.

Eland Business Services Limited are Property Development Loan Brokers.

Payroll Finance for an Unsecured Business Loan

UK Businesses seeking to enhance cash flow or increase working capital usually turn to traditional methods of financing such as invoice discounting or factoring. Payroll Finance is a smart, modern, unsecured lending solution that can make available cash equivalent to 2 months of a company's wages or salaries bill!

As a company payroll loan is totally unsecured it will not affect any other financial arrangements a business may have. What's more the company will still be in a position to take advantage of any other commercial loan that may be required. Costs involve a monthly service fee plus interest on any outstanding amount.

A company with a trading history and accounts could raise cash by rolling over wage bills for any business purpose in as little as 2 weeks! For more information on payroll finance and the cash flow alternatives visit Cash Flow Finance and discover your business options.

Commercial Loans - Update Part 2

Further to our previous blog, within the UK business finance market, commercial loan options that do not appear to have been affected by changing criteria are as follows:-

International trade finance seems to have been unaffected by either price increases or loan criteria changes. Therefore exporter and importers requiring "Letters of Credit" or "Forfaiting" can still have similar expectations of funding to the previous 12 months.

The other main business finance area that is relatively unscathed is cashflow finance, although we suspect there may have been some undisclosed changes to criteria in terms of debtor book quality.

Commercial Loan - update

Finance offerings in the commercial loan market place continues to change weekly.

Just recently we have been informed of changes to either prices or criteria in the following commercial areas:-

Price increases in the cost of equipment leasing from a number of lenders.

In the short term leasehold business sector one of the main lenders has pulled out of the market.

A major bridging loan lender has announced slight price reductions accompanied by a large reduction in what they will lend against property values.

It goes without saying that virtually all high geared property development loan lenders have either greatly tightened their lending criteria or are sitting on their hands!

Commercial deals can still be placed but overall the quality of any business finance proposal submitted by either brokers or borrowers needs to be much higher than previously required.

Factoring Popularity Increasing?

Received some independent research yesterday from a factoring company. Apparently alternative finance options have increased in popularity, with 52% of accountants saying it is now an "attractive source of funding for their clients", with asset based funding increasing by 30% in the last quarter of 2007.

Unfortunately these figures exclude invoice assets. As no invoice figures were supplied with the research we presume this market-place is pretty flat in-line with our experience and what we are hearing from our factoring suppliers.

It's now possible to factor your UK government invoices

Small UK companies trading with the public sector have historically had cash flow management problems due to the inability to assign government receivables debt. This created a barrier for SME's trying to enter this market place. Although factoring or invoice discounting of trade debts was not specifically disallowed, in practice the relevant public sector contracting authorities never gave consent thereby limiting SME's ability to compete.

Thankfully this position changed in this years budget and it is now possible for firms supplying goods and services to government departments to assign public sector invoices to specialist debt financing lenders without prior approval. If your company would like to know more about factoring debts we recommend reading public sector debt factoring for more information.

Bridging Loan News

Eland Business Services Limited have just launched a new web-site dedicated to a single finance product as part of our marketing effort.

www.bridgingfinanceoptions.com will focus solely on short term bridging loans to complement our existing general commercial finance site.

If you are an investor, property developer or maybe moving home needing cash fast and reside in the UK why not pay our site a visit.

Property Developers suffering with Finance Problems

We are increasingly receiving enquiries from UK property developers in distress as banks withdraw or reduce financial support. Developers with any kind of stretched facility or overdraft seem particularly vulnerable.

Fortunately for our customers we have a number of lenders available who will offer re-finance funds at a similar level of costs to the banks. Each development is appraised and finance on merit, therefore not all customers may receive similar terms, but we will do our best!

Why Do Businesses Choose to Lease Equipment rather than Buy?

When seeking any type of commercial finance, there are few areas of business funding that offer 100% finance availability. One area where 100% finance is available is asset based finance for equipment such as plant & machinery, computer hardware etc. In fact it is possible to lease any kind of equipment or asset, in many cases without any deposit, advanced rentals or extra security.

Many people in business think that leasing is for companies short of cash, in some instances that may be the case, but a little research shows that even the biggest companies use leasing to access assets essential to the running of their business.

One reason this finance option is a regular choice is the relative ease with which a leasing arrangement can be set up along with flexible payment terms, plus, other financial tools will still be available to the company. However the main factor in deciding to lease is cost, for most businesses the overall cost of leasing any particular asset or piece of equipment is lower than a cash purchase once loss of interest on cash on deposit and tax rules and deferred VAT payments are taken into account. It should be noted here that this rule may not hold for all businesses for example, start up companies or where poor credit history applies. Whatever individual circumstances apply, your accountant can offer professional tailored advice on any likely savings.

Unlike other finance options leasing offers fixed payments for the term of any agreement therefore easing cash flow management by not reducing working capital available to the company. Other major benefits of leasing is the possibility of upgrading or keeping technology up to date if the right finance option is taken out, adding new equipment to any arrangement is also very easy, especially once a payment record has been established. If you do not take ownership of the leased asset at the end of the term then the lender will have responsibility for it's disposal.

Finally, by opting to lease, funds can be retained within the company to aid growth, but also the opportunity to acquire access to more or higher specification equipment can add significantly to that growth.

I recommend you visit our Business Equipment Leasing page for more information on the topic of leasing.

© Eland Business Services Limited

Short Leasehold Business Loans

Within the UK commercial finance arena there is one area where it is usually very difficult to get a business loan. That area is raising finance to Buy a Short Leasehold Retail Business.

There are very few lenders who will offer finance without additional security. It is usually much cheaper to raise finance against another property, other wise funding is only on offer at a very high "short term loan" style rate. This is due to the higher risk involved and the underlying property being available on a lease on a term that is too short to raise a mortgage.

However we can now offer a facility over 5 years, providing the lease has at least 3 years to run at the end of the loan, at a very reasonable bank base rate plus 3% starting rate. The minimum loan is £30k, maximum loan is £125k and the maximum loan to value is 65%.

For more information visit our site Short Leasehold Business Loans.

Our New Commercial Finance Calculators

Having recently released a number of finance calculators live on our website we can report that we believe they have had a positive impact on visitor experience. In particular we released two bridging loan calculators, combined number of visits to those pages make them the most popular destination for our visitors within 6 weeks of offering them!

Here is the full list of calculators that we hope will prove useful for our UK customers.

• Equipment Leasing Calculator
  Equipment Finance Calculator returns low & mid price estimated monthly rentals.


• Bridging Loan Calculator for express finance.
  Finance estimates for single commercial or residential property bridge loans only.


• Bridge Finance Calculator for Home Movers
  Non-Status, fast bridging finance using equity from both your current and new property. Where more time is available then lower cost finance options may be available.


• Buy-To-Let Mortgage Loan Calculator
  This calculator returns the maximum mortgage loan based on the rent and interest rate supplied.


• We expect to offer more calculators in the near future, so watch this space!

Please note that calculators on our site return results for guidance only and do not constitute a quote or that any finance application may be accepted. No commercial decisions should be taken on the basis of those results.
For a proper assessment of any finance requirement for your business and a full quote contact us via our web-site: Commercial Finance at Eland Business Services Limited

Bridging Loans - Not quite as good as they were?

Bridging Loans being heavily marketed

I have been receiving an awful lot emails from new web sites and lenders pushing the virtues of short term bridging loans. They are all putting out the same message, telling me how good they are and encouraging people like IFA's to introduce new business to them.

As an established commercial finance broker we are well aware of the value bridging finance can offer to potential users and of course the dis-advantages of short term finance. When it's right for our customers then a commercial bridge will be offered as the best option.

So why might Bridging Finance not quite be as they were?

Well along side all this marketing more than one Bridging Lender has quietly reduced the Loan To Values they now offer. Indeed one that was ahead of the pack has dropped right back into the middle, perhaps even lower end when the prices rises for lower geared loans are taken into account.

So the credit crisis slowly rolls quietly out into the market place, but there is a glimmer of hope, that is if confidence in property is the key to salvation. I've just read that property prices in central London have grown by 7% over the last quarter, so perhaps things are not as bad as they seem!

Earn Commission for UK Commercial Finance Leads

We are looking to add to our list of Introducers

Are you an accountant, IFA or solicitor based in the UK! Perhaps you are a property professional such as an architect, quantity surveyor or valuer!

Your customers will sometimes need help financing their company or project, perhaps you feel an offer they have on the table is too expensive, maybe their bank is being less than helpful, thats the time you should call us and we will endeavor to help!

If the above scenario is familiar, then why not join our expanding band of professionals who introduce business finance leads to us and claim a share of any commission earned. In particular we are seeking leads in the following UK commercial areas:-

• Asset Leasing
• Bridging Loans
• Commercial Mortgages
• Factoring
• Letters of Credit
• Property Development Loans

We are more than happy to help your customers whatever their circumstances on a confidential and no obligation basis.

Visit our web site for more information on the Commercial Loan Services we offer and more information for Introducers.