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I read a financing expert’s Blog post about his experience helping a client get funding. It provided a much needed reality check as to how financing availability is not static; rather it’s constantly changing and even financially strong, profitable businesses may find that funds are not as easy to get as they once were.

“I recently worked with a client seeking financing from their business where the business is well established, has an excellent balance sheet, and is very profitable. The Owners were experienced, established, and had a solid track record of performance.

So why were they looking for financing?

Their primary and only institutional lender could no longer underwrite the type of business they were in.

Purchase order financing is a unique form of financing that can be utilized very profitably. It essentially makes it possible to handle orders that otherwise would have not been financially possible or responsible to take on. This means that Purchase order financing or PO financing increases a businesses ability to make sales and thus make profits.

It also has positive affects on a business’s cash flows.

The current recession has created a bleak lending environment for businesses and new data suggests it is getting worse. Today Federal Reserve Chairmen Ben Bernanke said that “many “creditworthy” firms with “strong” cash flows are having trouble getting loans.” This statement was based on data showing that S.B.A. lending has seen a two-thirds drop in the month of June compared to May, to bring it to the lowest levels in decades. Bankers say this steep drop is due to the expiration of a bill that provided higher percentage guarantees of loans made through the S.B.A. program.

With the S.B.A. taking a big hit, business’s have increasingly turned to asset based lending as it is usually the only option left open to them.

After long negotiations your business finally makes a huge sale. You look forward to building a relationship with this large client. However there is one catch; they want 30 day terms.

This could potentially be troublesome for the finances of your …

There are business forums all over the internet, full of people with good ideas that just need funding to get things moving. Most are hoping for an angel investor to provide them with the funding they need. This is one approach as Angel investors they can be utilized for all types of businesses; it is the “one-size-fits-all” financing method.  However angel investors are hard to come by and are not the only way to secure funding. There are many creative ways to fund businesses that are unique to a particular business model. Knowing what types of financing are available may help you receive the funding you are looking for.

Generally speaking, the biggest hurdle in financing a business is finding the money to get it started. The next big financial challenge for most businesses is finding an effective way to finance growth.

Growth can come in many different forms such as a new location, a bigger office, more equipment, more capacity, increased inventory, more staff, new products and/or services etc. Further, each business tends to be in a unique financial situation in terms of what different types of funding they can qualify for, which makes matching financing to growth requirements a complicated process.

Trust is a key component of any lending arrangement. The lender needs to have trust that the borrower will pay them back. The borrower needs to have trust that they are getting a fair deal that is in the best interest of their company; not a deal that only suits the lender.

However business owners can be desperate for money, and there are profiteer’s looking to capitalize on this desperation. The Wall Street Journal wrote and article about such a man by the name of Surinder Multani.. This loan broker charged steep fees to small businesses owners on the basis that he could secure a SBA loan for them. He did deliver on this promise, brokering almost fifty deals totaling $44.3 million dollars. However these loans were not of benefit to either the borrower or the lender as roughly half of the loans he brokered ended in default.