Cash flow shouldn't wait on your invoices.

Staffing agencies run on a timing mismatch that most other businesses don't face: you pay your contractors or temps weekly, in cash, no matter what — but the client you placed them with pays their invoice on Net 30, 45, or 60. The larger the client, the longer the terms usually run. Growth makes this worse, not better: every new contract you win is more payroll you have to fund before you collect a dollar for it.

Invoice finance (also called factoring) advances a percentage of an invoice's value — typically as soon as it's issued and verified — with the balance, minus a fee, released once your client pays. Because the advance is secured against a receivable you've already earned, lenders underwrite the creditworthiness of your customers as much as your own financials, which is why newer or thinly-capitalized agencies can often qualify when a bank loan would say no. Done right, it turns your invoice book into a revolving line that grows with your billings, rather than a one-time loan you have to renegotiate every year.

Invoice finance and a merchant cash advance (MCA) both get sold as quick working capital, but they solve different problems and cost differently. Invoice finance advances money against specific B2B invoices you've already billed — it requires you to have outstanding receivables from creditworthy commercial customers, and cost is generally tied to how long the invoice takes to pay. It scales naturally: bill more, and your available capital grows with it.

An MCA advances a lump sum against your future card or bank revenue, repaid through fixed daily or weekly debits regardless of how the invoice book looks. It's faster to underwrite and more forgiving on qualification, which is exactly why it's overused — including, too often, to "refinance" a business that's already trapped in MCA debt from a previous advance. We won't do that. If your business has real B2B receivables, invoice finance is almost always the cheaper, more sustainable answer; MCA is a bridge for businesses that don't have that option yet, not a way to roll one advance into another.

New York's Commercial Finance Disclosure Law requires providers and brokers arranging certain commercial financing — including factoring and merchant cash advances — to give borrowers a standardized written disclosure before they sign: the total cost of financing, the term, payment amounts and frequency, and other figures laid out in a consistent format, so offers can actually be compared side by side.

Before this law, commercial financing offers (unlike consumer loans) didn't have to disclose costs in any consistent way, which made it easy for a fast-talking broker to make an expensive product look cheap. We structure every referral we make to reflect the spirit of that disclosure requirement: clear terms, in writing, before you commit — whether or not a given lender or deal size technically falls inside the statute. If a broker won't show you the full cost of capital in plain numbers before you sign, that's a reason to ask more questions, not fewer.