Hi, my name is Graeme Shevas.
I help Scottish businesses who are having problems with their cash flow, to release cash from their sales invoices.
I’ve been in business for over 30 years and one of the questions that my customers have been asking me lately is ‘how do I get my cashflow moving now that other businesses are having trouble paying their bills?’.
Here’s my best advice: If you’re a Scottish firm operating in the Business to Business sector, you’ll be raising invoices for your products or services. At the moment, your normal payment terms for those invoices will most likely be 45 to 60 days. You may have seen a drop-off in trade and the amount of money that you’re going to have over the coming
months will be significantly reduced.
You may well have enough to get you through until the point where you can begin trading at normal levels again, but when you need cash to pay the bills as you return to normal trading levels, you’re going to have to wait another 45-60 days for payment. Therefore, the actual funding gap is going to be longer than the business interruption.
How are you going to plug that gap? This is where Invoice Finance and the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) guarantee may be able to help. As soon as you raise an invoice you could have access to 85-90% of its value within 24 hours instead of having to wait the 45-60 days to get paid. This will give you ready cash flow to allow you to meet your costs and thrive as we get back to normal.
There are other ways of raising cash in the short-term, such as bridging loans or refinancing assets, but in my view at the moment, the longer-term solution would by your Invoice Financing provision. It is a straightforward process for the application and there are no fees for me to do that, they are covered by the provider.
This is something that I specialise in and my role is to make sure that you don’t need to go to lots of different providers. You only need to go to me and I will access the most suitable providers based on the sector that you’re in, your turnover, and how your business is doing. I can save you time and get you the deal that will work for you.
I hope you found that useful. If you’re a business based in Scotland and you need help with Invoice Financing, you can reach me on 07776 257 342, at graeme@playfairfinance.co.uk, or fill in the ‘Contact Us’ page on this website.