Staffing Factoring vs. Payroll Funding
If you operate a staffing or temporary employment agency, chances are that you’ve run into these two terms at some point in your search for business financing. Since we often get asked how these differ from one another, we thought we’d use this post as an opportunity to shed some light on the Staffing Factoring vs. Payroll Funding confusion. Before we begin down that path, let’s quickly consider why staffing agencies need financing to begin with. According to the American Staffing Association:
“Temporary and contract staffing sales totaled $29.93 billion in the second quarter of 2015.”
That’s right, nearly 30 billion dollars in quarterly sales! So why do these companies need financing at all? The issue is that the vast majority of sales revenue gets immediately paid out as wages to your contract employees and to cover associated payroll taxes. To further complicate matters, staffing agencies often have to make these wage payments long before they actually collect the sales revenues from their customers. As a result, employment agencies, especially newer companies, typically need small business financing of some sort to cover their immediate payroll costs while waiting to collect the cash which that very same payroll generated. Hence the birth of “payroll funding”.
Staffing Factoring = Payroll Funding
So are these two financing options different or one in the same? The simple answer is that for all PRACTICAL purposes, they are basically two names for the same thing. There are two minor caveats. While the popular usage of the term “payroll funding” merely refers to invoice factoring for staffing-related firms, it is often used more generally to refer to invoice factoring for any business type that is primarily using the funds to cover payroll costs. On the other hand, staffing factoring only refers to invoice factoring for staffing-related businesses. The second caveat is that it is also used to refer to an accounts receivable financing program that utilizes your receivables as a borrowing base instead of actually selling the receivables, as is the case with factoring. The truth is that all invoice factoring can be considered payroll fundings to some extent regardless of the industry in which it is utilized.
Takeaways
The good news is that regardless of what you’ve heard it called or what you like to call it, we can help! If you’d like to learn more about how our staffing factoring and payroll funding solutions can benefit your business, please Contact Us now. Our team of specialists are eager to help you determine the best program for your cash flow needs.