How Contractors Can Help Their Customers Find Financing Options

One of the problems with contracted jobs is the cost. Now really, the cost isn’t the actual problem, it’s the sticker shock your customers get when they find out how much their project will cost. They simply aren’t prepared to face a $10,000 or $20,000 (or more) price tag and immediately have second thoughts.

Contractor

So what can you do about this? One way to help is to make it clear there are ways to finance the job available and you can help them use one of them. Then when you get to the price tag you can fill them in with some of those options.…

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What Is Working Capital Financing?

Working capital “¦ the lifeblood of growing companies, and a term every corporate accountant and analyst must have an intimate understanding of. Easily defined, working capital is simply the difference between current assets minus current liabilities, or the cash on hand for a company to use as necessary.

For any successful business to thrive, it must have ready reserves of working capital, which can be utilized at a moment’s notice. Without sufficient working capital, an organization is doomed to fail – regardless of the quality of its goods and services.

What Is Working Capital Financing?

There are plenty of options when it comes to acquiring working capital; one of the more popular ways is a commercial term loan.  …

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How Business Loans Can Help Small Business

Loans are an integral part of all businesses big or small. In times of financial needs these loans can help the businesses to keep their doors open. A business can require financial assistance for various different reasons and at different phases of its life cycle.

How Business Loans Can Help Small Business

You might need a loan for starting up your dream project or to expand and modernize or to recover from a financial wreck caused due to unforeseen situations, the reasons are plenty. However, understanding the need for a loan and how the money would add to the prospects of your business is of utmost importance.

There are plenty of sources of finance available to meet your needs.

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5 Ways Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners Are Bootstrapping Their Companies

5 Ways Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners Are BootstrappingStarting a small business is hard. And in today’s economy, getting the most for your money often equates to the creative distribution of your financial resources.

That’s why so many entrepreneurs and small businesses are inventing ways to bootstrap their operations.   Luckily, there are a number of affordable tools and strategies that cost little but deliver big, which is ideal when your business is on a budget.

As a provider of business services and entrepreneur myself, here are five resources I’ve found that are currently working well for small businesses.

  • Inventive marketing – Generate interest in your business through creativity. For example, try promoting a contest like The Royal Society of Chemists.
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3 Critical Financial Steps to Starting a Local Business

3 steps to starting a successful local businessStarting a business is an exhilarating time. It can also be a very stressful and busy time. As a local business owner, you often end up wearing all of the hats (CEO, Accounting, HR, Marketing, etc.) in the beginning due to lack of funding early on.

In all honestly, this isn’t such a bad thing because it’s nice to know how things work and how all the pieces fit together if you’re the one running the business. At the same time, the goal is to be able to hire experts to handle other departments at some point in the future so you can focus on building and growing the business.…

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Take Your Banker Out to Lunch

Starting a small business means having as many allies as possible and few allies are as important to new business owners as the banker.

build a relationship with your banker

It always pays to be on the good side of the person who has a say over whether or not your emerging business will be extended the loan it needs to get through the initial stages. Well as you might already know, it’s important to be on the good side to anybody that influences your business in any type of way.

Here’s a tip: Take your banker out to lunch and build a relationship with them.

For years, entrepreneurs and company associates have taken clients to lunch as a way to either establish a potential relationship or strengthen a rapport that had already existed.…

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The Impact Of Fraudulent Applications For SBA Loans

SBA loan fraudulent applicationsThe Small Business Administration (SBA) should be commended for their help in sustaining the small business sector with their microloans. However, a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that the funds which should be distributed to businesses that need it, actually go to ineligible ones. The HUBZone certification which businesses need to qualify for a loan is a program which spans 13 years and is meant to help small business owners build companies in economically distressed areas. When investigators submitted applications which should be denied or disapproved because of obvious reasons; those applications got the federal contracts instead.…

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Bank of America Announces New Program to Help Spur Small Business Lending Nationwide

Bank of American lending program for small businessesBank of America (BOA), one of the world’s largest financial institutions, has announced it will provide $10 million in grants to nonprofit lenders, such as Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), to leverage funds from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for lending to small and rural businesses.

The grants to nonprofits will help up to 8,000 businesses obtain new loans over the next 12 Months.

The CDFI’s will use the grant money as loan loss reserves, which BOA hopes will unlock millions in low-cost capital for small business microloans program nationwide.

SBA and USDA microloans are made through local nonprofit lenders, which also provide business training and technical assistance.…

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Credit Card Options Limited For Small Business Financing

small business credit cardsIt used to be that even upstart businesses with no credit history could secure $50,000 lines of credit with no documentation. Bank of America began such a program in 2006. And since then, other banks followed suit offering $50,000 and $100,000 loans to new and un-proven businesses. In a press release at the time, Bank of America stated that even “a small business owner in business for only one day could qualify” for its $100,000 line of credit program.

Until recently, credit cards had always been a reliable source of financing for entrepreneurs as well. Ease of credit card access gave small business owners an important, cost effective, and highly flexible means for managing cash flow, purchasing inventory, and expanding operations.…

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