Daniel H | Aventura, FL
Daniel invested in his love for video production by starting Ar Video Production, a full-service visual content company located in Aventura Florida that specializes in videos for Kickstarters, corporate, and lifestyle brands.
“My challenge is always cash flow,” Daniel says. AR Video Production clients typically pay 40 percent in advance for a product and the rest after it’s completed.
Daniel uses the advance for production expenses such as payroll, equipment rentals, and logistics. “There’s not much profit for me,” Daniel says. Aside from production costs, “I also have to pay my bills, such as rent.”
Waiting for the final payment is “the tricky part,” Daniel says, “especially if the production actually costs more than the advance and a new month is starting. The backflow of payments can sometimes translate into overdue bills.”
AR Video Production has several contracts with solid companies, Daniel says. But in video production, delays happen. “Sometimes product modifications or manufacturing delays or changes in our client’s management can affect the timely payment of our contracts.” This typically means getting paid later which inevitably triggers cash flow gaps for Daniel and his team.
“If one customer pays even just a few days late, it can really put us all behind,” Daniel says.
FundMate helped make this juggling act work for his business. Daniel says: “It came at the right time and solved all the problems I was facing. FundMate seemed to be the easiest and the quickest to work with.”
With FundMate, taking on a new project is no longer a daunting challenge. “In the past, if I didn’t have cash to pay for a production, I would just turn down the project. It’s ridiculous to turn business down because you don’t have the money, and FundMate fixed that for us.”
“There are times,” Daniel adds, “when I find myself saying, ‘Man if I had FundMate at that time, I probably would have made $100,000 more in revenue that year.’ It’s definitely one of those cards you want to have in your back pocket.”
Our clients grow with us. They use FundMate financing to address everyday funding needs and to pursue opportunities to take their business to the next level. This series aims to highlight the stories of small and medium-sized businesses that have grown and continue to grow with FundMate.
Joel M | San Francisco, CA
The Force was with Joel in 2016. His company, Sceptra Technologies, a consumer tech gadget maker, rolled out its product that year. It was a big success. Suddenly, Sceptra Technologies was on a roll…
“We had a rapid start and needed a finance line to keep up with the demand of supplying national US retailers,” says Joels. Finding retailers to sell its hit product wasn’t hard. But many retailers offered net-60 terms, which was bad news for Joels. Waiting two months to get paid meant he had to scramble for other ways to pay for manufacturing and overhead expenses. He found a solution in invoice factoring which let him get cash advances on unpaid invoices.
However, traditional, paper-based factoring was slow and couldn’t adequately meet the business needs. He spent a lot of time manually filling out, scanning, and emailing paper forms whenever he submitted invoices for funding. That turned out to be a hassle for a fast-growing company like Sceptra Technologies which wanted to expand to 30 different SKUs. Joels needed a technologically advanced factoring company that could handle a large volume of invoices.
“FundMate”, he says, “became a better option as we were trying to scale.” With FundMate, the factoring process was more streamlined: Joel could log in anytime, select the invoices he wanted for funding, and have money in his bank account within a day. “A software system like FundMate offers is critical to us. We run so lean that we need full transparency on the accounting side and quick approval of invoices.”
“FundMate had real people to help out”, Joels says. This became clear to him during their first holiday season run when an invoice payment from one of Sceptra Technologies’ customers got delayed. With traditional factoring companies, you may get penalized with hefty fees for a delayed invoice payment. But Joels worked with his account manager at FundMate to find a solution.
“Rather than denting our cash flow,” he says, “the FundMate account manager allowed us to continue factoring invoices from the good-paying customers, and chip away at the past-due amount with weekly payments.” Eventually, the retailer paid the entire invoice amount and Joels settled the account, and having FundMate as a partner helped set Sceptra Technologies up for success during its first holiday run.
Our clients grow with us. They use FundMate financing to address everyday funding needs and to pursue opportunities to take their business to the next level. This series aims to highlight the stories of small and medium-sized businesses that have grown and continue to grow with FundMate.
