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Asset Based Lending (ABL ) allows you to raise significant funding for your business through a combination of traditional Factoring or Invoice Discounting and funds raised against your existing assets. In terms of lending solutions, whether you’re planning on growing, buying, refinancing or expanding, Asset Based Lending can often raise significantly greater funding than traditional bank lending.

How it works

Asset Based Lending allows you to raise from £50k – £50m with:

• up to 100% on outstanding invoices
• up to 80% of the market value on plant and machinery
• up to 30% on raw materials
• up to 50% on finished products
• up to 60% on property

Advantages

• Raise money for MBI/MBO’s or refinancing, without surrendering equity
• Enjoy continuity of funding, which grows as your business grows

• ABL is a fast and effective way to fund growth and it’s scalable
•   It provides a higher availability of working capital when  compared with traditional lending facilities
• receivable and inventory facilities are revolving facilities,  with available working capital growing in line with your business
• Build an Asset based Lending package to fit your precise requirements
• Asset based lending will  help maintain cash flow – especially seasonally for businesses who trade in fluctuating markets.

City centres are in danger of becoming ghost towns as shopping habits change, a committee of MPs has warned.  A fifth of UK retail sales now occur online with that proportion likely to grow, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee said.

The Committee called for lower business rates and more regeneration in town centres as well raising taxes for online giants such as Amazon.

The government said it was investing to ensure High Streets “adapt and thrive for generations” but the impact on high streets had been “stark”, resulting in “store closures, persistently empty shops and declining footfall”.

One problem, the committee said, was that High Street retailers paid much higher business rates than online retailers because of their greater reliance on physical premises.

Amazon UK’s rates, for example, are about 0.7% of its UK turnover, while most High Street retailers pay between 1.5% and 6.5%.

To counter this, the MPs said the government should look again at bringing in an online sales tax – an idea the Treasury previously ruled out over concerns it would penalise consumers.

The committee urged it to consider “green taxes” on online deliveries and packaging, as well as higher VAT and a general sales tax.

The revenue raised would be put towards a reduction in business rates for High Street retailers and more funding for regeneration, it said.

The committee also called for planning reforms to create more “green spaces” in city centres, as well as more leisure, culture and social care services.

And it said High Street retailers themselves needed to focus on “experience” and “convenience” to lure shoppers back – for example by extending their opening hours.

High Streets Minister Jake Berry said the government had unveiled a £675m plan to support English High Streets at the last Budget.

“We know High Streets are the backbone of our economy and a crucial part of our local communities, and we want to see them thrive – both now and in the future.

“We’re supporting small retailers too, slashing business rates by a third – building on more than £13bn of rates relief since 2016.”

We have a number of finance options for retailers to support growth and cashflow.  These include Business Loans for any purpose, Asset Finance to fund shop refurbishments of investment in equipment, Commercial Mortgages for buying retail property, Flexible Overdrafts to ease cashflow problems and Merchant Cash Advances which give advances on future sales.

A report produced by the government on late payments and how they affect SMEs shows that the number of average days a business has to wait to get paid is getting longer. 

Many SMEs, especially when dealing with single large businesses, find it difficult to influence the terms of contracts with customers or challenge them over payments.

Bacs Payment Schemes Limited put the total figure owed to SMEs at £14 billion, while the Zurich Risk Index estimated that SMEs were owed £45 billion by larger companies alone, having previously reported that SMEs were owed a total of £225 billion in late payments. The UK performs worse than other countries both in terms of the proportion of invoices that are late, and the total amount of late payments and amount of late payments written off as bad debt.

There is also a wider cumulative effect, where late payments prevent whole industries and sectors becoming more productive and makes them less able to invest in infrastructure and skills. The report found that SMEs write off up to 7.5% of late payments as bad debt. In the worst-case scenario, small businesses can go bankrupt because of the cash flow problems caused by late payments. It has been estimated that each year as many as 50,000 small business go bankrupt with loss of up to 350,000 jobs.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) in June 2018 found that more than a third of small suppliers had had their payment terms increased over the previous 2 years, indicating what it characterises as “supply chain bullying”. SMEs can also face other unfavourable terms. The FSB reported that 12% of SMEs it surveyed had been asked for a discount for prompt payment, 7% for retrospective discounting, 6% for a fee to remain on a suppliers list and 3% had experienced a discount being applied after goods and services had been supplied.

Businesses can consider Factoring invoicing to ease the pressure on cashflow. We specialise in this type of finance so contact us for more information.

Businesses come in all different shapes and sizes and each has their own story. Some lenders look at the business and its financial records to asses their ability to repay the loan based only on factual information and trading history. Of course this is a very sensible tactic but sometimes a negative history is not what it seems and can often be explained. Our staff talk to lenders and explain our client’s back stories allowing the lender to make an informed decision.

After sending a loan application on behalf of a client recently we were surprised when the application was rejected by one of our usual lenders. We had provided all the information required, the company was profitable and had shown growth. It became clear that the Directors had experienced a previous liquidation and this was the reason for the rejection. We tried all our usual lenders with no luck but we didn’t give up. There was a very valid reason for the previous liquidation and we were able to explain this to one of our lenders and secured a £50,000 loan for the client.

To discuss your lending options get in touch with us.

Sugar CRM. Ever heard of it? It’s like candy for your customers…thus the name entails. It’s a great way to boost sales for your business, retain customers, and actually save money while doing so.

Here are the top 5 features that might make you consider using Sugar:

1. It’s affordable. Their most popular plan – the ‘professional version’ is only $540 per year per user. That’s equivalent to only $45 per month. It has a lower cost of entry and its open platform is cloud-based allowing for it to be cheaper than most on-premise solutions. Needless to say, it’s a cost-effective way to stay engaged with your customers and give them what they love – a little sugar.
2. Options and flexibility. SugarCRM offers customizations galore! It integrates fluidly with many of the current CRM products you may be using. Sugar uses common language, utilizes SOAP and REST API and there’s no hidden fees or limitations which gives you greater control. There’s also a myriad of add-ons that can be used with Sugar. Not to mention…SugarCRM also works in an open environment, giving you more control of your company’s future and saving you money while doing so.
3. It’s social! There’s an Activity Streams dashlet that allows you to see Facebook friends’/fans’ news feeds, see who you should get connected with on LinkedIn, and read tweets of all the people you follow in the dashlet. The platform also lets you add a Twitter handle to a contact or lead and read their tweets directly in the contact or lead record. Lastly, Sugar also has great e-mail integration, letting you sync contacts, calendars and tasks from Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Lotus Notes and pretty much any IMAP mail server.
4. Collaboration and Project Management. Sugar delivers a full project management solution combined with the sales management, marketing automation, and customer support used by employees to manage customer-centric activities. These capabilities allow users to deploy projects across all customer-facing tasks, including campaigns, opportunities, accounts, and customer cases. Since project management is integrated with Sugar’s customer information, users no longer need to be concerned with redundant or inaccurate information, lost customer data, poor information sharing, or lack of user adoption.
5. It’s Mobile! Sales teams surely love this feature as they’re often on-the-go. Sugar allows you to access client information from your tablet or Smartphone and also lets you add info in real time. This means that if you’re at an event and encounter a lead, you can seamlessly add their information to Sugar mobile and your sales team can have an e-mail to them in minutes!

For further business improvement ideas please contact Roger Brown from nuOrder Limited, a leading business consultancy working with many award winning clients.
See www.nuOrder.co.uk

Business doesn’t happen, you make it!

The amount of profit you make is due to either your success or failure and ultimately fuels the growth of your business, generates a financial support for the owners and provides for the well being of the staff.

To increase your profits you need to determine factors contributing to your gross profit and your overheads. Gross profit requires you to either expand your sales income while controlling your direct costs, or reduce direct costs to increase gross profit.

WH Smith the high street retailer has pleased the financial markets by delivering lower revenue but with a higher margin %. As they say ‘revenue is for vanity, profit is for sanity, and cash is reality’.

To do this you need to ensure the following:

• You know and understand your market/s and your competitors
• You have full product and/or service knowledge and you are technically capable in managing all aspects of the business
• Your service and/or products are of the highest quality, delivered on time and run in accordance with any legislation or other specifications.
• You apply marketing campaigns that are cost-effective but increase your sales. These include in-house promotions, leaflets, press releases and adverts.

Your business overheads also need to be kept under control and requires you to monitor, review and strategise for the following:

• Business Expenses – keep to an absolute minimum, and ensure that any additional overheads you assume result in increased profitability and/or efficiency.
• Increase Overheads – ensure that you have reviewed the market and established where the best place is to purchase your stock. Reliability and costs need to be justified.
• Assets acquired on finance – Review and check your finance options to see if you can getter a better deal elsewhere or reduce your general loan costs
• Reviews – Many businesses could benefit from a regular review of their telephone and insurance costs. Even bank charges can often be reduced through negotiation or review.
• Credit – Regularly monitor your credit account customers to avoid bad debts occurring and find the best credit card deal relating to your business.

Roger T Brown
Consultant
http://www.nuOrder.co.uk