What does this guide cover?

Two reports you already have. One decides how much you can borrow against your invoices; the other tells a stranger how tight things are.

Which funding products does this apply to?

Working Capital, Business Line of Credit, Invoice Financing, Asset-Based Lending. Each has its own page listing the funders in this directory that offer it and what each one publishes about its terms.

Are the figures here quotes?

No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What a particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it at all.

The Find Me Funders research desk. Some drafting is AI-assisted, and every page that is says so at the top, including whether a person has checked its claims yet.

How do I know a figure here is right?

Where a page carries the green notice, its claims were checked against the sources listed at the end and a reviewer is named. Where it carries the amber one, nobody has verified it yet and you should confirm anything you plan to act on.

Are the examples real deals?

No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What any particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it.

Why do you never say what a typical rate is?

Because we cannot source it. A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it. Where a lender publishes a figure, we show that figure and say where it came from.

Is this financial or legal advice?

No. It is general information about how these products work. Outcomes depend on your contract and your state, and a lawyer or accountant licensed where you are is the person to ask about your situation.

Can I reuse this content?

Quote a paragraph with a link back. Do not republish whole articles.

A/R and A/P ageing reports in a lending file

An ageing report is a list of open invoices bucketed by how long they have been outstanding — current, 1-30 days past due, 31-60, 61-90, over 90. Receivables on one, payables on the other. Any accounting system produces both in a few clicks. That is why lenders ask for them, and it is why an ageing that arrives late or looks hand-built is itself a signal.

What the receivables ageing decides

For invoice factoring, asset-based lending and revolving facilities, the A/R ageing is not background — it is the collateral, and the report is the instrument that sizes the facility.

Eligibility.Not every invoice counts. Common exclusions: anything past a stated age, usually 90 days from invoice date; invoices to a customer who is disputing; credit balances; related-party invoices; government or foreign obligors unless specifically permitted; contra accounts, where your customer is also your supplier and could set one debt against the other; and progress billings or invoices with retainage where the amount is not finally earned.

Cross-aging.This one surprises people. If more than a set share of one customer's balance is past the age limit, the whole of that customer's balance is often made ineligible, including the invoices that are current. One slow payer can remove more availability than its arrears suggest.

Concentration.Where one customer is a large share of the ledger, the amount above the cap is excluded. Suppose one customer is 70% of your ledger: you do not get a facility sized on that 70%, you get one sized on the cap plus whatever else qualifies.

Dilution.Credit notes, returns, short-pays and discounts, measured as a percentage of gross billings. High dilution means invoices do not collect at face value, and the advance rate comes down to reflect it.

Take the gross ledger, remove the ineligibles, apply the concentration cap, apply the advance rate. What is left is availability. It is usually a good deal less than the ledger total, and knowing this before you apply prevents the most common disappointment in receivables finance.

The availability calculation, worked

Illustrative only —a ledger of $840,000. Strike the invoices over 90 days ($62,000), the two disputed accounts ($18,000) and the balance owed by an affiliate ($15,000). That leaves $745,000.

Your largest customer owes $310,000, of which $20,000 sat in the over-90 bucket you just removed, so $290,000 remains. Apply a 25% concentration cap against the $745,000 pool: $186,250 is the most that one customer can contribute, so $103,750 comes out. Eligible collateral is $641,250.

At an 80% advance rate, availability is $513,000 — about 61 cents for every dollar on the ledger.

Now run the cross-aging case on the same numbers. Suppose next quarter more than half of that customer's balance ages past the limit. The whole $290,000 goes ineligible, not just the aged part. Eligible falls to $455,000 and availability to $364,000. One slow customer removed $149,000 of borrowing capacity, and nothing about your sales changed.

Every percentage above is a placeholder. Ask the funder for its own age limit, concentration cap and advance rate, then rebuild the calculation with those figures before you sign.

What the payables ageing tells them

The A/P ageing is not collateral. It is a portrait of how you are managing pressure, and the analyst reads it in a specific order:

Anything past 90 days. Who is being stretched, and can they stop supplying you.
Tax authorities and payroll obligations. These outrank the lender in more ways than one and their presence in a stretched bucket changes the whole assessment.
A single dominant supplier. If one vendor can shut you down and is being paid slowly, the lender is looking at operational risk, not just credit risk.
The relationship between A/P days and A/R days. Collecting in 55 days while paying in 25 explains why you need working capital, and it makes the ask coherent. Collecting in 30 and paying in 90 with no cash raises a different question.

How to produce reports that hold up

Date them and tie them out.The ageing must be as of the same date as the balance sheet, and the total must equal the receivables line on that balance sheet. When those two numbers differ, the file stops until someone explains it, and the explanation is usually an unapplied credit or a journal entry sitting outside the subledger.

Include the detail.Customer name, invoice number, invoice date, due date, amount, and the bucket. A summary by bucket alone will be sent back for the detail on anything that gets financed.

Show the invoices you have written off or given up on.A ledger padded with two-year-old balances nobody expects to collect looks like either poor housekeeping or an attempt to inflate the base. Either reading hurts you, and both are avoided by writing them off before you send the report.

Flag related-party and contra accounts yourself.They will be found. Finding them yourself is credibility; having them found is a discount.

Be ready for verification.In factoring, invoices get verified — sometimes with the customer directly. Know before you sign whether your facility is notification or non-notification, and what your customers will be told.

Where the ageing misleads, and what to say about it

Seasonality.An ageing dated in your quietest month shows the smallest ledger you will have all year, and a facility sized on it will be too small in your busiest. Send the current report because that is what is asked for, and send the same report from the equivalent month a year earlier alongside it, so the shape of the year is visible rather than inferred.

Customers who pay slowly by policy.Some large corporates and public bodies pay on terms that push every invoice toward the bucket that gets excluded. That is not a collections failure, and it is worth saying so at submission with the customer's stated terms attached. Some facilities set the age limit from due date rather than invoice date, which changes the answer completely for a business on 60-day terms.

Retainage and progress billing.Amounts held back until a job completes are not finally earned, and most facilities exclude them. If a meaningful share of your ledger is retainage, show it as its own line rather than letting it sit inside the gross figure and disappear at the eligibility stage.

The version to run for yourself

Before you apply for anything receivables-based, build the availability calculation yourself. List the ledger. Strike out everything over 90 days. Strike out the disputed and the related-party items. Apply a concentration limit to your largest customer. Look at the number that remains and ask whether it funds the gap you are trying to close.

If it does not, receivables finance is not the answer to this particular problem, and you have saved yourself a submission, a set of documents and a field exam to find that out.

The A/R and A/P ageing reports, and what a lender reads out of them