Choose financing by the problem you are solving
Most lending content is organized by product, which is useful only once you already know which product you want. This section starts where you actually start.
The right financing follows from two things: what the money is for, and how the repayment will arrive. Get those two straight and the product choice mostly makes itself. Get them wrong and no amount of rate shopping saves the decision.
Find the situation closest to yours. Each page compares the realistic options, says what the cost actually is, and states plainly when the answer is not to borrow at all.
A large order I cannot fund
A purchase order bigger than your bank balance — and the four real options.
Customers pay in 60 days
The most common cash problem in B2B — and the one with the most options.
Sales are seasonal
Predictable, which makes it the easiest cash problem to finance well.
I need a truck or machine
The asset secures the deal, which makes this easy to finance and easy to overpay for.
Buying a business or location
The biggest financing most owners arrange — and the ways the structure goes wrong.
I was denied
A decline is information, not a verdict. Find the real reason and plan the next move.
The three questions that decide it
What is the money for?
An asset, a gap, a purchase, or a loss. An asset gets asset finance. A gap gets revolving credit. A purchase gets term debt. A loss is not a financing problem.
How long does the need last?
Weeks, months, or years. Match the term of the financing to the life of the need. This single rule prevents most expensive financing mistakes.
Where does the repayment come from?
A specific customer payment, general trading, or the asset's own earnings. If you cannot name the source, the question is not which loan — it is whether to borrow.
When the answer is not a loan
Worth saying once, plainly, because no commission-funded site will: a good number of financing enquiries are better solved without financing.
- Supplier terms. Net-30 or net-60 closes the same gap at zero cost, and suppliers grant terms more readily than owners expect.
- Customer deposits. On large or custom work, 30% to 50% up front is ordinary.
- Collections discipline. Invoicing same-day and calling at day 31 recovers cash that financing would otherwise have to cover.
- Leasing instead of buying, where the asset dates quickly.
- Reducing inventory, which is often the actual place the cash went.
- Waiting. A purchase that cannot be serviced today may be comfortable in two quarters, and the option to wait is worth more than owners credit it.
If after that the need is real, the question becomes what it costs and whether the cash flow supports it. The affordability calculator runs the same test an underwriter runs first, and comparing loan offers covers everything in a term sheet that is not the rate.