Business Loan in Canada

A big part of business is focusing on profit margins and productivity, but keeping a business operating healthily gets a bit more complicated than that. One of the concepts you can’t afford to neglect is working capital.Working capital is a necessary data point for any business, and while sometimes it’s taking a bit more time to understand, it is absolutely crucial for maintaining a healthy balance sheet and operating effectively.We’re going to go over what working capital is, why it’s important, and some of its uses in the business world. Let’s get started.

What is Working Capital?

Working capital is essentially what you have left after taking out all the money you need to pay the bills. Think of it like you would in your personal life with a normal job. You get paid, you add up all your household bills and debts, set that money aside to take care of those necessary expenses, and you can work with whatever you have left. If needed, you also have assets you can leverage such as your savings, valuables, and other things that can help beyond the cash you have on hand.In more professional terms, this is everything you have, assets and cash on hand, minus the liabilities you have such as credit card debt, the bills necessary to keep the business running, payable taxes, and more.How you determine your overall working capital is by adding up your assets and financial resources and subtracting the total amount required to pay your expenses.We’ll keep it easy with solid numbers, but your actual calculation will likely be slightly more complicated.Let’s say you add up your assets and have $100,000 in value. After you add up your liabilities, you calculate that you have $50,000 to pay in total. $100,000 minus $50,000 is $50,000. That's your working capital.

Why is Working Capital Important?

Working capital is important in two main ways. At a first glance, it seems as if having as much of it available as possible, but that’s not quite accurate. Let’s go over both ways it can go and why balance is important.

What is Negative Working Capital, and Why it is Important?

This is the primary concern most business owners are going to have, and it’s certainly one that is most immediately noticeable.Negative working capital is when you use the formula we provided earlier, and you don’t have enough to cover your liabilities.That means you don’t have enough to pay your bills, essentially.If you don’t have the capital available to pay off your liabilities, you certainly can’t commit to any sort of growth, and the immediate future of your business doesn’t look promising, either.There are solutions to this that we will talk about later, but this is the worst-case scenario in a lot of situations.

What is Positive Capital, and Why it is Important?

Positive working capital is the opposite of negative working capital. It’s when you do have some resources left over to work with.For example, if you were the average homeowner working a normal job, you’d have some money left over after paying bills. Not all of it is “take home money”. Some of it has to go into savings in case you plan something big, like a major family trip abroad. The same concept goes for positive capital in business.That doesn’t mean that having it in extreme excess is optimal, though. In fact, it can mean that you’re making poor business decisions.If you regularly have way more working capital than expected, it typically means that you’re not taking advantage of growth opportunities, low debt situations, and other crucial parts of the business world.In the long term, this can mean that your business growth stagnant and that excess will start to decline eventually. It can also mean that you’re not providing reasonable upkeep for your business, which has major consequences, or it can mean that you’ve failed to account for various liabilities and your results are false; which is a major accounting error.In the vast majority of situations, you want to have your growth goals in mind, and you want enough to facilitate those goals. It’s also “working” capital. So, make sure it’s working for you.

How to Increase Working Capital for Higher Growth Potential?

Whether your business has a negative working capital amount, or you simply have larger growth goals you want to accomplish, increasing your working capital is usually going to be attractive. As long as you’re actually using it.Doing that can be difficult, but there are some key data points to target and strategies to use.Primarily, you’ll have two core options: You can increase the number of assets you have to offset your liabilities, or you can get rid of some liabilities such as debts that are close to being paid off.

Increasing Working Capital Assets:

Increasing your working capital assets is going to focus on improving your margins. The larger your margin is, the more working capital you’ll have left over assuming you don’t increase your liabilities. This is essentially the same as telling you to "earn more money”, which isn’t very constructive if money is the problem in the first place.If you’re already generating positive working capital, focusing some of those resources on short-term growth that helps with your margins is a strategy you can use. However, that’s a problem if you’re in the negative since you don't have anything to work with.For example, let’s say you have positive working capital, but you don’t have enough to focus on your goals. You might not be financially capable right now. Instead, pump some of that into marketing a big sale, increasing your inventory in high-demand areas, and similar things to earn more working capital.That’s where a working capital loan comes in, and we’ll get to that shortly.

Decreasing Liabilities to Gain Working Capital:

The other way to earn more working capital is to get rid of liabilities where possible. If there is debt that can be paid off in the short term, paying that off frees up a little more to go toward working capital amounts. If you can lower your tax liability, that’s another way to keep a bit more of your margin.It can also be possible to delay purchases. While growth is the ultimate goal, if you’re struggling to maintain a healthy balance sheet, delaying purchases until you can generate more working capital to accommodate them is crucial.For example, let’s pretend you’re a restaurant. You’re moving around $50,000, but after you pay your vendors, staff, and landlord, you’re only keeping $10,000, and that’s your networking capital. If you can consolidate some of this cost, for example automate ordering process and reduce waiter’s team, you can lower the liability cost and generate more profits.Again, this is something that a working capital loan can help with if liability removal strategies aren’t working or aren’t feasible.

What is a Working Capital Loan?

Alright, we’ve talked about a variety of issues that can pop up with working capital and damage your ability to grow, but now it’s time to start talking about real solutions.There are a lot of situations where you just don’t have any room to work with. You can’t boost your assets, because you don’t have capital, and you can’t remove any liabilities, because they’re all long-term, non-negotiable, and absolutely required.So, how do you get over that speed bump?Primarily, you can get a working capital loan.A working capital loan is a loan used to overcome cash flow problems; but it’s not just used in negative circumstances. Any business owner can benefit from one at a certain point, and it can be a positive experience.Here are some of the ways it’s used.

1. Funding Growth Goals

Sometimes, you’ll have growth goals, and you’ll have positive working capital, but you just don’t have enough funds. In that circumstance, you can use a working capital loan to get that extra bit of funding you need in the short term.For example, let’s say it’s the perfect time to open a new location, but you’re $20,000 short on the overall costs. A working capital loan can help.Of course, the payments will become liabilities later. So, it’s best to be in a relatively healthy position when using a loan for this purpose.

2. Overcoming Financial Speed Bumps

Every business will experience a speed bump in its financial growth at some point. Take COVID-19 for example. Nearly every business went from doing great to suddenly seeing a drop in assets for one reason or another.A working capital loan can help overcome those bumps.If you go into the negative slightly, you can get a working capital loan that helps you remove smaller liabilities and invest in ways to build up non-depreciating assets to grow your margins.There are strategies involved in using a working capital loan this way, but one can save a business and keep it above water in such situations.It’s a lot like when you accidentally spend too much of your check as an average person, and your car payment is coming up. You don’t want to lose your car. So, you get a personal loan to cover it until you’re in a better situation.

3. Waiting on Invoice Payments

In an ideal world, all customers would pay on time, and you’d know exactly when funds were going to arrive. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.Sometimes, you’ll technically have plenty of working capital on the horizon, but invoices just aren’t getting paid on time.A working capital loan can work like an advance on those invoices to make sure you’re still able to make moves while you wait.

4. Taking Advantage of Opportunities

Sometimes, you’ll be presented with opportunities you don’t want to pass up. For example, maybe you rely heavily on a supplier’s hardware for one of the products you manufacture. For a limited time, they’re offering half-off on bulk shipments of that hardware.That can allow for tremendous savings in the future and a lot of potential for growth. However, you might not have the ability to fund it without throwing your balance sheet off balance.This is another situation where a working capital loan can be the little edge you need to come out on top. Its fast, gets the job done, and keeps you from missing such fruitful opportunities.

Understanding the Working Capital Cycle

Beyond noticing problems with your working capital and finding solutions, you’re also going to want to look at the working capital cycle. This will help you predict when you’re going to have certain assets available, and that allows you to plan for them efficiently.The working capital cycle is the time it takes for your assets to become cash that can pay off your liabilities.For instance, think about the customer invoices for a subscription service. You know that 1000 customers are set to pay their invoice on the 30th. That means that, while you have those accounts as assets, they aren’t realized yet. You don’t actually have the money. The time between now and those payments clearing is your working capital cycle. After the 30th, you would be able to pay your liabilities in this scenario.As such, you want to streamline your working capital cycle as much as possible to ensure everything is moving quickly and efficiently.The best way to do this is to ensure that your customer payments are covering your liabilities. Since waiting for accounts to clear usually takes the longest, ensuring that they pay the liabilities off allows your other assets to simply keep growing and building up more working capital.

The Risk of Certain Working Capital Assets

You’ve probably put together a decent understanding of what working capital assets are at this point. If not, the basics are your customer invoices, inventory, cash, and pre-paid debts.One of those is somewhat volatile, and you shouldn’t aim to build much of your working capital on it. That’s your inventory.Your inventory can be a risky asset. It can become obsolete, depreciate in value, and dramatically impact your working capital amount without any chance of turning into cash. Take fidget spinners for example. During the craze, everyone stocked up on them. That was almost guaranteed cash flow. However, when the trend stopped, that inventory became largely useless. Anyone with too much inventory consisting of that product saw their cash flow tank.This can happen with anything. So, it’s important to understand that risk, diversify assets, and have a solid plan to use your inventory; not just stockpile it for perceived working capital.Think of all the people who bought into Beanie Babies in the 90s, and then think of what happened a few years later when no one cared. The Beanie Babies represent your inventory, and no one caring represents your entire inventory devaluing like crazy. You don’t want things sitting around unless they are guaranteed to be necessary for the future.

The Three Types of Working Capital and How to Differentiate

Finally, there are three types of working capital, and while they all generally work the same way, you will need to differentiate between them.

1. Net Working Capital

This is all the working capital you have at your disposal, and it’s the general number that you’re going to want to keep tabs on.

2. Temporary Working Capital

This is your working capital amount in temporary situations. Think of things such as the speed bumps we talked about earlier, or maybe even expected boosts such as holiday sales. Since the causes for the fluctuations are temporary, you have to work that into your understanding of your working capital during that time period.

3. Permanent Working Capital

The name of this one is misleading. It’s not the amount you’re guaranteed to have all the time. It’s the amount you absolutely need to make it. If you make less, your business’s health starts dropping, and you either fix it or lose it.This is the bottom line of what you need to barely get by, and you want to calculate it regularly since your liabilities and assets will change regularly.

Get a Working Capital Loan with 2M7 Financial Solutions

If you’ve gone through this brief guide and realized you could really use a working capital loan to help your business for any reason, contact us to start the process.We specialize in advanced loans that can help your business seize opportunities, fix temporary problems, and continue operating in a healthy state.

If you have set some big goals in your life, then you may wonder how to keep yourself motivated. The good news is that there are a number of proven ways to keep yourself focused and energized to reach the goals that matter the most to you. Here’s a look at five proven ways to keep yourself motivated and reach your goals.

1) Clearly define your goals

The first thing that you need to do is clearly define your goals. Saying, “I want a successful business,” or “I want to be rich.” is not motivating enough. You need to give your mind specific goals that can give it focus. For instance, if you want to have a successful business, define the business (Ex. I want to generate $1 million in annual sales with my cupcake business). If you want to become wealthy, set a specific dollar amount at a specific date (ex. I want to have $3 million in my bank account by January 1, 2030). This will allow you to have the focus and direction that you need to stay motivated and on track to your goal.

2) Choose goals that motivate you

On the path to reaching your goal, you will encounter roadblocks that will challenge your will to continue. The one thing that will get you passed those roadblocks are goals that matter to you. Therefore, you need to choose goals that will motivate you during hard times. What matters to you? Is losing weight really important or reaching a certain financial goal? Choose goals that you are willing to suffer and endure to accomplish.

3) Plot your progress

The most worthwhile goals will be long-term goals. Therefore, you need some motivation to keep you going. A great way to keep you on the road to your goal is to track your progress. For instance, if you are looking to lose weight, then keep track of the weight that you have already lost. This will give you the energy and the drive to keep going.

4) Set up checkpoints for your goal

Instead of having one big goal, create mini-goals that give you a sense of accomplishment more often. For instance, if your goal is for your business to have $1 million in annual sales, then set up goals to reach $100,000 in sales every 35 days. This will allow you to have a short-term focus that can motivate you to keep going.

5) Visualize your goals

Finally, you will want to visualize how your world will look when you finally accomplish your goal. Set aside 15 to 30 minutes a day to visualize your life after completing your goal. Create that feeling of happiness and content that you intend to feel. That positive energy will give you the drive to keep going.

Helping You Get to Your Goals

Reaching your goals can become a challenge. When your business needs a little edge, contact 2M7 Financial Solutions. We can provide your business with a merchant cash advance when you need it. Contact us today to learn more.

What is a small business loan?

Generally speaking, a business loan is borrowed by a business owner or a company in order to finance and manage its operations including, but not limited to, purchasing equipment or inventory, investing in expansion, hiring new employees, and more. A business loan has terms and conditions directing how and where the money can be used, what the interest rate is, and what would be the repayment schedule. Every financial institution has its own criteria and requirements for lending and offering the best business cash advance loans; each will assess your credit rating differently in order to estimate how risky it is to lend you money and will offer you several lending options.  A small business loan is fundamentally the same, where the money borrowed for small business needs to be used to purchase equipment or hire employees. For entrepreneurs who are looking to get their venture off the ground, the small business start-up loans are a great alternative. New business owners say that the biggest challenge in starting a business is to get financing. In this case, private lenders and government programs offer financing options to help out new businesses.  At the federal and provincial levels, Canada offers startups various financial aid programs within specific sectors and regions. For instance, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) offers loans to entrepreneurs to set up a new business, build or renovate facilities, buy equipment, develop new products, expand into new markets, improve IT infrastructure, and even sell the business.

Getting approved for your business loan

In order to get approval for small business loans in Canada, the owner has to provide a business plan as well as have all their documents in order. Firstly, you should ask yourself the following questions which will help you with your loan application:

• Why does your business need the money?
• What is the right type of loan for you?
• What type of lender should you approach?
• Do you think you qualify? If unsure, how can you improve your situation?
• Do you have all the documents required by the bank?

Financial institutions are reluctant to provide business loans unless there is sufficient security or collateral to guarantee the loan. Numbers show that less than 25% of small startup business loan applications are approved by major lenders. That is why private lenders have become such a practical financing option in the last decade. Unlike venture capital or angel investors, they do not require you to put up a percentage of your business. Moreover, it is easier to obtain a business loan from private lenders as they are more flexible with the loan terms. The paperwork is not as difficult and loans approvals happen faster than in major financial institutions.  Below are a few types of small business loans and financing options:

1. Lines of credit
2. Peer to peer (P2P) loans
3. Merchant advances
4. Investor loans
5. Term loans
6. Commercial Bank Loans
7. Equipment Loans for Startup Businesses
8. Online Invoice Financing
9. Traditional Equity Financing
10. Personal Loans

Types of startup business loans

Startup needs differ from established and even small business needs. Moreover, the startup most likely generates zero or negative revenue in the beginning. Entrepreneurs who are looking to borrow money for their business are usually asked for personal guarantees and collateral. This means that the business owner may put up his house or any other assets as collateral for the loan. That said, start-up business loans may not be the best option – especially if there are not enough assets available. As mentioned above, small business start-up loans from private lenders are better alternatives. Whether obtained through crowd-funding, private lenders, or the government, small loans can help a business owner pave the way for his business. Currently, equipment loans for startups are very popular. These are relatively small loan amounts, so the equipment that is purchased can be put up as security. Merchant cash advances and peer to peer funding can help small businesses with their cash flow and managing operations. Business lines of credit (LOC), sometimes called corporate credit loans, are like credit cards but for businesses. It is a revolving credit system, where the business owner can withdraw the amount of money they need, up to the credit limit allowed by the lender. The borrower only pays interest on the amount that is borrowed. A business LOC can help a small business owner meet its cash flow requirements and manage their debt effectively.

A merchant cash advance for start-up businesses

Known as a “business cash advance”, merchant cash advances work on different terms compared to traditional loans. Unlike bank loans, a merchant cash advance does not evaluate credit score. Small business owners can typically receive up to $300,000 startup business Cash advance, without having to offer security for the loan!Under a merchant cash advance, the business receives a lump sum of advanced cash with the condition that the lender will receive a percentage of your future sales. Therefore, the merchant cash advance is a simple and fast way of getting capital right away. A merchant cash advance for startup businesses is a great financing option, allowing flexibility in repayment. For instance, if your sales in one month are lower, then the repayment amount will be lower; similarly, if your business performs very well the next month, your loan repayment will be higher. The private lender also takes care of repayments, ensuring there are no delays in payments from your end. Most of them have agreements with major payment processors, so private lenders can set up repayments based on your daily sales received by credit cards, which eliminates any headache of repayments on your end.   For business borrowers who need the money as soon as possible, merchant cash advances are one of the fastest ways of getting cash flow. Once the business loan is approved the cash advance is directly deposited into your account within one or two days. If you think it might be a good solution for you, do not hesitate to get in touch with us.