How to Get a Working Capital Loan for Your Company
Working capital loans allow you to pay for operational expenses, purchase inventory, or support short-term projects. These loans can help you take advantage of timely expansion opportunities or solve short-term cash flow issues.
However, you can supplement your business capital with a variety of financing options. These numerous sorts each have advantages and disadvantages that may or may not make them a good fit for your company’s financial needs.
In this piece, we’ll go over the following topics to help you understand the business funding landscape:
- What exactly is a working capital loan?
- How the application and repayment processes operate
- How to Use Working Capital Business Loans
What Exactly is a Working Capital Loan?
A working capital loan for small businesses is a short-term loan offered by a financial institution or alternative lender. Small business loans come in a variety of forms, including:
- Temporary loans (including secured and unsecured loans)
- Cash advances from merchants
- Factoring of invoices
- Credit lines for businesses
- Credit cards for businesses
- Bridge funding
- Loans for inventory
- Finance for equipment
The purpose of a working capital loan, regardless of its type, is to support short-term needs such as rent, labor, debt payments, or corporate activities. You can invest in your business’s growth or cover important business expenses if you have this cash on hand.
How Can a Working Capital Loan Be Used?
To understand how to use a working capital loan, you must first grasp what working capital is and how to use it.
“[Working capital] is money that you have tied up doing the things you need to accomplish in the ordinary course of business.”
This comprises funds invested in the following:
- Accounts payable
- inventory
- Accounts payable
- Short-term debt
All of the instances shown above are examples of working capital loans. A working capital loan, as the name implies, can be used for any short-term expense linked with your day-to-day operations.
The one catch is that some types of working capital loans impose restrictions on how you can use the funds. To make things easier, the next two sections list working capital loans based on their use of money limits.
Loans for Working Capital with No Use of Funds Restrictions:
There are no restrictions on how you can use the funds from the following forms of working capital business loans:
- Alternative lenders’ loans
- Cash advances from merchants
- Factoring of invoices
- Credit cards for businesses
- Credit lines for businesses
This means you can use these loans for anything from debt consolidation to expanding your inventory. We recommend pursuing a financing plan with no usage limits so that you can use your funds however you see fit.
Working Capital Loans with Restrictions on Funding:
Working capital loans have various constraints on how you can use your funds:
- Temporary loans (SBA Loans and some bank loans)
- Bridge funding
- Loans for inventory
- Finance for equipment
Each of these loan types has various constraints. Business owners, for example, can only use inventory loans and equipment finance for inventory and equipment.
The usage of cash is not as clear-cut as term loans and bridge financing. Some term and bridge lenders may impose limitations on how you can use the funds. You must enquire about these limits with specific lenders.
How to Apply for and Get a Working Capital Loan:
The specific procedures you take to apply for a working capital loan will vary depending on the lender and loan type. Regardless of the lender or loan, there are some things you can do to prepare yourself.
To that end, while applying for a working capital loan, we recommend the following five steps:
Learn about the many types of working capital business loans.
- Prepare your commercial bank statements.
- Check your personal and business credit scores to ensure you match the lender’s minimum credit score standards.
- Discuss existing debt with your online lender.
- Determine how you intend to spend your working capital in the long run.
When you’re ready to sign a business loan contract, carefully examine the terms and conditions. Read our post How to Apply for Working Capital From a Lender for additional information on applying and qualifying for working capital loans.
Finally, be ready to repay a working capital loan.
As you might think, how you repay a working capital loan is determined by the type of loan you receive. A term loan and a merchant cash advance, for example, have distinct repayment conditions.
With a term loan, you typically repay your balance in fixed monthly payments. Even among term loans, payback schedules might vary dramatically. You may have an interest-only period or a variable interest rate, both of which can affect how you repay the loan. Also, read about the personal loan.
In comparison, you complete your commitment by remitting your credit or debit card sales with merchant cash advances on a daily or weekly basis. The idea is that there is no one manner for working capital loans to be repaid.
