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• 13 Aug

  Cash Flow Finance

  Cash flow finance (CFF) is a term that refers to short-term financing products that can be used to boost the cash flow of a business.

  Cash Flow Finance Solutions For Businesses

  Typically these solutions may include facilities such as:

  • Invoice financing products
  • Business or commercial loans
  • Bank overdrafts
  • Merchant cash advance
  • Corporate credit cards

  Cash Flow Financing That Grows With You

  Pretty much any finance that is for working capital purposes i.e. not to buy an asset, could be included under this banner. If you want CFF that grows with your turnover as you expand, this is a feature of both invoice finance and merchant cash advance. 

  COMPARE QUOTES NOW

  How Easy Is It To Find "Cash Flow Finance" By Searching Online?

  We have updated my findings on how easy it is for a company to find cash flow finance quotes from trusted providers when they search the Internet. This is the typical type of customer that we might help with an independent search of the invoice finance market.

  So this search could be made by the owner of a new startup business that has decided they need some funding to improve the flow of money through their company. Perhaps they have some unpaid invoices tying up their working capital so invoice finance would be a good fit, and perhaps they have suppliers to pay.

  They may not be clear on what types of funding are available, so they use a generic search term. We looked at how easily and quickly, they can find their way to a service like ours that can provide the quotes they need.

  You may recall that I looked previously at how difficult it is for startups to find business finance via a web search. This article addresses a different type of search.

  Cash Flow Finance Search

  Searching via Google in the UK, using the search term "cash flow finance", the adverts are of course the top results.

  Adverts By Advertisers

  The top result is not from an invoice finance company, so not a great start but it is from an independent commercial lender that provides loans. Google adverts work by advertisers bidding to get their ads to the top of the list for various search terms. Of course, this only means that you see the ad from the party that is bidding the most, and their position in the search results does not assure you of their standing. Although organic search results (positioning according to Google's ranking of your website according to various factors such as incoming links from other websites) are not any assurance of standing either.

  An Alternative To Comparing Adverts

  A better strategy may be to find a party you can trust and ask them to recommend providers. This is the gap that we, and our peers, try to fill with our brokerage services that connect customers with suitable financiers. You can read reviews from customers about our service here.

  Anyway, returning to the top search result (the paid inclusion ad from an independent loan provider) the next advert was from a major independent invoice financing group with national coverage, They may be able to help our example customer, but they don't offer selective options which may be important to a new start-up.

  Difficulties If You Rely On Search Results

  The next result is actually for a company that provides cash flow management software, which is completely irrelevant to our example client who is specifically seeking financing. Unfortunately, this is a common example that you see if you rely on search results. A company from an allied sector targets broad key phrases in the hope of attracting new customers. However, this does not help you narrow down your online search for specific services and only serves to obscure the results. Additionally, this can create a lot more work for the customer to sift through these types of search results.

  The final paid result at the top of the page was for a company that we had not heard of offering instant approval on cash flow loans of between £5,000 and £100,000. This may be helpful but it should be noted that whilst instant approval may be possible with smaller loans but is unlikely with larger-value loans.

  Next on the page were the organic search results.

  Organic Search Results

  Organic search results are those that are highly ranked according to the algorithm that Google applies to rank the competing material. In this case, the top results was from Investopedia (a site to help you understand complex financial terms) with their definition of cash flow financing. This site will tend to rank very highly as it is used as a recognised source of information. However, this 1st place result will not help connect our example customer with providers.

  Questions About Cash Flow

  Below those results are a list of further questions from Google:

  • What is cash flow finance?
  • What is cash flow model in finance?
  • What is cash flow stream in finance?
  • What is net cash flow in finance?

  None of these questions is what our example customer is looking for if they are seeking to connect with suitable providers. The three later questions are completely irrelevant.

  More About Cash Flow Finance From The Organic Search Results

  So the 2nd organic result is from a national institution set up to help connect businesses with funding. The page does allow our example customer to drill down into invoice financing services but based on a local search for providers it returned 22 local search results. These results included accelerators, growth hubs, incubators and finance providers. The providers were found a fair way down the list and they were not aligned to the status of our example customer., e.g., being a startup.

  The 3rd result was for a large, well-known independent financing group. This might be a helpful result for our example client as we would recommend them but would not be the only option that we would present to our client seeking cash flow finance.

  The 4th result was another page from Investopedia about how cash flow works.

  The 5th result was from a brokerage offering cash flow loans.

  The 6th result was another broker with what looked like a fairly substantial form to be filled out by our client including the need to register and set up an account to proceed.

  The 7th result was an article from the blog of a company that provides cash management software. Completely irrelevant to our example customer.

  The 8th result was the national institution (result 2 above) again.

  The 9th result was a bank offering the opportunity for customers to borrow against future cash flows.

  The final entry on the page is another paid inclusion advert, this time from a lender offering Amazon store financing, growth funding and lines of credit. They required 6 months trading history and £100K revenue per month which would mean our example client was not suitable.

  Difficulties Finding Cash Flow Funders

  The saga above demonstrates the difficulties of finding cash flow funders that offer invoice finance services to new startups. It is hit and miss if you just randomly pick results from a Google search, you could get a bank that only deals with their own larger customers, a niche independent provider, a tied broker or an independent broker. You may not see a perfectly suitable provider's result as they have put no effort into appearing in the online search results (I know of at least one invoice finance company that has almost no interest in web search positioning) and it takes either money, and or effort, to rise in the rankings.

  An Alternative To Searching Online

  FundInvoice offers an independent quote search and support service for invoice finance, and other forms of business funding. We have undertaken a lot of research to compare prices and service levels from providers, before you waste time sifting through all these online results please call us on 03330 113622 so we can connect you with providers that can deliver cash flow finance.

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  Related Information

  See also our online Cash Flow Guide.

  By Glenn Blackman