Working capital
Invoice Finance for Healthcare Suppliers, Laboratories and Agencies
Release up to 90% of an approved invoice within 24 hours of raising it, and stop funding your customers’ payment terms out of your own reserves.
The proposition
Turn a sales ledger into a working capital line
Any healthcare business that invoices on terms is lending money to its customers. A dental laboratory waiting sixty days on practice accounts, a locum agency paying clinicians weekly against monthly billing, a domiciliary care provider funding rotas ahead of local authority settlement — all three carry a funding gap they did not choose.
Invoice finance closes it. The funder advances the bulk of each invoice as it is raised and releases the balance, less charges, when the customer pays. The facility grows automatically as turnover grows, which an overdraft does not.
Confidential invoice discounting keeps the arrangement entirely between you and the funder. Factoring adds credit control and collections, which is often the more useful option for a small back office carrying too much.
Who it suits
Businesses that invoice, not businesses that take card
The product depends on a business-to-business sales ledger with creditworthy debtors and clean, undisputed invoicing. Practices billing patients at the chair should look at a merchant cash advance instead.
Where a business has both — a practice with a laboratory arm, or a clinic with a corporate occupational health contract — the two facilities sit alongside each other without conflict.
- Dental and orthodontic laboratories invoicing practices on account
- Locum and staffing agencies supplying clinicians to NHS trusts and practices
- Domiciliary care and supported living providers on local authority contracts
- Equipment, consumables and pharmaceutical distributors
- Practice management, compliance and decontamination service companies
- Medical device manufacturers holding stock ahead of order
Client outcomes
What the facility changes
Growth stops consuming cash
The funding line rises with the ledger, so winning a larger contract no longer creates a working capital hole before it creates profit.
Payroll becomes predictable
Agencies paying weekly against thirty-day billing can commit to clinicians without holding a quarter’s wages in reserve.
Credit control lifts out
Under a factoring facility the funder chases and collects, which typically shortens debtor days as well as freeing the office.
At a glance
Indicative terms
- Advance rate
- Commonly 80% to 90% of the approved invoice value, released within 24 hours.
- Facility size
- £50,000 to £5m, sized on the sales ledger rather than the balance sheet.
- Charges
- A service fee on turnover plus a discount margin on funds drawn. Selective and whole-turnover options priced differently.
- Structures
- Confidential invoice discounting, disclosed factoring, selective single-invoice finance and export facilities.
- Bad debt
- Non-recourse facilities with credit protection are available on approved debtors.
- Contract
- Twelve months is standard; selective facilities can be used invoice by invoice with no commitment.
Related funding lines
Questions
Invoice Finance — frequently asked questions
Not under a confidential invoice discounting facility. You continue to invoice and collect in your own name, and the arrangement is not disclosed on your invoices. Confidentiality generally requires reasonable systems and a track record, which most established businesses can evidence.
Disclosed factoring is visible to customers, because the funder handles collections. In the healthcare supply chain that is unremarkable and rarely affects relationships.
Yes. Selective or spot invoice finance lets you pick individual invoices or a single debtor, with no whole-turnover commitment. It costs more per invoice but suits a business with one large contract and an otherwise comfortable ledger.
Under a recourse facility the invoice is recharged to you after an agreed period, usually 90 to 120 days. Under a non-recourse facility with credit protection the funder absorbs the loss on an approved debtor, subject to the policy terms. We set out both costs so the protection can be judged on its merits.
Next step
Send an aged debtor report
An aged debtor listing and your last set of accounts is enough to size a facility, quote the true cost and identify which structure fits.
Prefer to write? Send an enquiry or email info@apexfundingpartners.co.uk.