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By Travis Yule — CEO & Founder, Full Send Funding
Cash-flow shape picks the product, not credit score; cost is horizon times instrument, so $100,000 ranks twelve products differently at 30 days than at 180.
In one sentence: The working capital product is picked by cash-flow shape — even or lumpy receipts, a timing gap or a growth step, a flat or peaked year — not by credit score, and because cost is horizon multiplied by instrument the same $100,000 need ranks twelve products differently at thirty days than at a hundred and eighty.
The right working capital product is decided by the shape of your cash flow, not by your credit score. Twelve products are sold to small businesses under the heading "working capital", and nearly every guide to them sorts by credit tier — the good-credit products at the top, the expensive ones at the bottom — as though the only question were how much you can be trusted with. That framing picks the price. It does not pick the product. What picks the product is whether your receipts arrive evenly or in lumps, whether the shortfall is a timing gap or a growth step, whether your year has a peak and a trough, and whether there is a specific asset, invoice or contract on the far side of the money.
Read that way, the twelve products collapse into four families, sorted by what actually repays them: instruments repaid from operating cash on a fixed schedule (a term loan, an SBA 7(a) loan, an SBA microloan, a business credit card, a line of credit); instruments repaid by a specific customer or contract (invoice factoring, an accounts-receivable line, asset-based lending, purchase order financing, mobilization or contract financing); an instrument repaid from revenue as it arrives (the merchant cash advance and its revenue-based cousins); and an instrument secured by the thing it buys (equipment financing). A business with net-60 invoices from creditworthy customers and a business that is paid at the till every day are not two credit tiers. They are two cash-flow shapes, and the products that fit them barely overlap.
The other thing the credit-tier framing hides is that cost is a function of horizon multiplied by instrument, not a property of the instrument alone. A line of credit accrues by the day and is cheap for sixty days; a fixed-fee advance costs the same whether the money is out for sixty days or a hundred and eighty; factoring is priced per thirty days of an invoice's life. Put the same $100,000 need against each and the ranking changes with the number of days. That arithmetic follows, with a decision matrix keyed to cash-flow shape, a worked example with named numbers, and a plain list of when each product is the wrong tool — including ours.
Start from the repayment side, because that is where the products genuinely differ: what money pays this back?
Repaid from operating cash on a schedule. A term loan, an SBA 7(a) loan, an SBA microloan, a business credit card and a line of credit all draw their payments from whatever the business earns, on a calendar the contract sets. The lender is underwriting the business as a whole — history, cash-flow coverage, the owner — because nothing more specific stands behind the payment. This is the family that rewards a long track record and full financial statements, and where a short operating history costs the most.
Repaid by a specific customer or contract. Invoice factoring, an accounts-receivable line, asset-based lending, purchase order financing and mobilization or contract financing are tied to an identified receivable, order or contract, and are retired when that particular money arrives. The provider is underwriting the payer at least as much as the business: a factor cares who owes the invoice, a purchase order financier whether the order is confirmed and non-cancelable, a contract financier who signed the contract. This is the family for lumpy cash flow, because it converts a lump you are owed into cash now.
Repaid from revenue as it arrives. The merchant cash advance and revenue-based financing purchase a fixed amount of future receipts and collect as those receipts land — by fixed daily or weekly debit, or by a percentage held back at the card processor. The underwriting is the bank statements, because the bank statements are the receipts. This is the family our own facility sits in — a defined-term working-capital facility with a fixed daily or weekly ACH remittance matched to how the business is paid — and it exists for a business whose revenue is real but which has no invoices to sell, no order to finance, no eighteen months of statements to show a bank, or no time to wait for one.
Secured by the thing it buys. Equipment financing stands alone because the collateral is the purchase. The asset's resale value carries part of the risk, which is why the term can run to the asset's useful life and why it is usually cheaper than general working capital for the same borrower.
Scale matters, because the choice is not academic. In the Federal Reserve's most recent Small Business Credit Survey — a nationwide convenience sample of 6,525 employer firms with fewer than 500 employees, fielded from September to November 2025 — 38% of firms had applied for a loan, line of credit or merchant cash advance in the prior twelve months, most often to meet operating expenses (56%).[6] The share applying to online lenders had risen from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey, and 60% of the firms that borrowed from an online lender said the cost was higher than they expected.[6] Much of that surprise is a fit failure rather than a pricing failure: the wrong instrument for the horizon, chosen because it was the one that said yes.
Cash-flow shape is the pattern of a business's receipts on three axes, and all three are visible in the bank statements before anyone looks at a credit report.
Rhythm: even or lumpy. A restaurant, a salon, a retailer or an e-commerce store deposits every day, in amounts that vary with the week but never with a single customer's decision to pay. A subcontractor, a staffing agency, a manufacturer or a distributor is paid in draws and invoices — $80,000 on a Tuesday, then three quiet weeks. Even receipts can service a daily remittance. Lumpy receipts cannot, whatever the averages say — a product that debits every banking day against receipts that arrive monthly will be reconciled or refinanced — so a remittance against lumpy receipts has to be weekly and sized to the draws, and lumpy receipts are also exactly what receivable-backed products are built to buy.
Purpose: a timing gap or a growth step. A timing gap is a shortfall in which the revenue exists and arrives later than the expense — a contract that pays in sixty days, a seasonal ramp, retainage held. It should be financed by an instrument whose term ends when the revenue lands. A growth step — a second location, a larger crew, a contract that needs hiring before its first invoice — has no single receivable behind it and needs an instrument repaid from the expanded revenue over a longer horizon. Financing a growth step with a sixty-day tool means refinancing it; financing a sixty-day gap with a three-year tool means paying for thirty-four months you did not need.
Season: flat or peaked. A landscaper, a tax preparer, a resort-town retailer and a heating contractor all have a year with a peak and a trough, and the product has to be sized to clear the trough, not the peak. A revolving line drawn in the pre-season ramp and repaid out of the peak is the natural instrument; a fixed-payment product taken in March and still remitting in the January trough is the classic mistake. Funding a seasonal business covers the timing.
Two further questions settle the product inside a family. Is there an asset on the far side of the money? If so, the asset should secure the deal, because that is the cheapest risk transfer available. Who is the credit? If the answer is "a creditworthy customer who owes us money", the customer's balance sheet can carry the facility even when yours cannot. None of those five questions is about your credit score: the score sets the price inside a product; the shape picks the product.
The table states each product on the same six terms — the shape it fits, what it is sized to, what repays it, its horizon, what secures it, and how the price is quoted. Sizing figures for the government programs are the published program limits; ours are our published range.
Program limits and caps are the published figures: 7(a) maximum, guaranty percentages and fee pass-through from the SBA’s terms and conditions; 7(a) rate spreads from 13 CFR §120.214; CAPLines maturity from the SBA’s types of 7(a) loans; microloan limit, average, rate range and term from the SBA’s microloan page; federal progress payment rates from FAR 32.501-1. Full Send Funding’s sizing, term and cost-of-capital figures are its published range. Everything else in the table describes how the product is structured, not a measured market figure.
A paragraph on each, in the order the table lists them.
Term loan. A single lump sum repaid with interest on a fixed schedule over a set term. Interest accrues on the declining balance, so early repayment genuinely saves money. It fits a defined, one-time use with a known payback — a build-out, an acquisition, a consolidation — and it is the wrong shape for a recurring gap, because it is drawn once and repaid whether or not the need recurs. Bank term loans want history and statements; ours are underwritten on revenue and bank activity and sized inside 80% to 150% of monthly revenue. Line of credit versus term loan is the fuller comparison.
Line of credit. A reusable limit drawn against as needs arise and repaid to be drawn again, priced on the drawn balance. It is the only structure that rewards repaying quickly, because the limit refreshes — which makes it the right instrument for a recurring, unpredictable gap: payroll that lands three days before a large receivable, inventory bought ahead of a season. It is the wrong instrument for a permanent capital need, because a line fully drawn all year is a term loan with a worse rate and an annual review. Our lines run from $10,000 to $2,000,000.
Merchant cash advance and revenue-based financing. The purchase of a fixed dollar amount of a business's future receivables at a discount, paid for with a lump sum today and collected as revenue arrives — by fixed ACH debit, by a percentage holdback at the card processor, or by a processor split. It fits a defined gap with an end — a season, a large order, a contract mobilization, a receivable that is late but coming — in a business with no invoices to sell, a short operating history, or a need measured in days, with the remittance matched to how the business is paid: daily for a business paid at the till, weekly for one paid in draws or invoices. Its price is a factor rate fixed at signing, which is the property most people misread: the cost does not shrink if the money is repaid early, so the instrument is expensive for a sixty-day need and reasonable for the horizon it was priced on. Our published range is 4.5% to 45% cost of capital, depending on qualifications and term length; how advances actually work covers the mechanics and the reconciliation right that separates a purchase of receivables from a loan.
Invoice factoring. The sale of specific unpaid invoices to a factor at a discount. The factor advances most of the face value — the advance rate — at purchase, collects from your customer, and remits the reserve less its fee when the invoice settles. Under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code a sale of accounts falls within the same scope as a security interest[9], and once sold the seller retains no interest in the account[10], which is why the factor files a UCC-1 against your receivables and your customer is usually notified. It fits lumpy receipts owed by creditworthy payers — staffing, trucking, subcontracting, wholesale — and is sized to the invoice, not to you; its real cost against a receivables line is worked on a $500,000 book of receivables. The staffing gap is the canonical case.
Accounts-receivable line. A revolving line secured by receivables as a class rather than by named invoices, with availability set by a borrowing base — eligible receivables at a stated advance rate, less concentrations, disputes and anything over ninety days. You keep collecting; the lender monitors. It fits the same businesses as factoring once they can report a borrowing base monthly, and it is usually cheaper per dollar because the lender is not running collections. The SBA's Working CAPLine is a government-guaranteed version of exactly this: an asset-based revolving line for businesses that cannot meet the credit standards for long-term credit, repaid by converting short-term assets to cash.[3]
Purchase order financing. A facility that funds the supplier cost of fulfilling one confirmed, non-cancelable order, disburses principally to the supplier, and is retired by the receivable when the goods are delivered and invoiced. It fits the moment an order exceeds your capacity to buy the goods for it, and nothing else, because it ends at invoice and does not touch the receivables gap that follows; the margin has to carry two fees, the PO financier's and then the factor's beneath it. When purchase order financing beats a line of credit works through the margin floor.
Equipment financing. A loan or lease secured by the equipment purchased, with the term inside the asset's useful life. It fits any need that is really an asset — a truck, a press, a rack system, a dental chair — and it is usually the cheapest capital a young business can get, because the asset's resale value carries part of the risk. The federal Section 179 election lets a business expense the cost of qualifying equipment in the year it is placed in service, up to $2,560,000 for tax years beginning in 2026[15], on financed purchases as well as cash ones. It is our stated exception to no collateral. Equipment financing 101 covers structures and the $1 buyout question.
SBA 7(a) loan. A bank loan partly guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. Most 7(a) loans carry a maximum of $5,000,000; the SBA guarantees up to 85% of loans of $150,000 or less and 75% above that, and lenders pay an upfront guaranty fee which they may pass on to the borrower.[1] Variable-rate pricing is capped by regulation at a spread over the base rate that falls with size: 6.5 percentage points on loans of $50,000 and less, 6.0 points up to $250,000, 4.5 points up to $350,000, and 3.0 points above that.[2] Since July 2026 an eligible borrower may combine a 7(a) loan with a 504 loan for up to $10,000,000 in SBA-backed financing.[5] It fits a large, long-horizon need — real estate, a major expansion, a permanent working-capital base — in a business with the financial statements and the weeks to close it; how many weeks, against the alternative, is its own question. It does not fit a gap that closes in sixty days.
SBA microloan. Loans of up to $50,000 made by nonprofit intermediary lenders with SBA funds, averaging about $13,000, usable for working capital and for materials, supplies, furniture, fixtures and equipment, with rates generally between 8% and 13% and terms of up to seven years.[4] It fits a very small, early-stage need where the borrower also wants the intermediary's technical assistance. It is capped low and not fast.
Business credit card. A revolving limit priced at a card rate, repaid monthly, with the grace period as the only free money in this list. It fits small, frequent, short purchases paid within the cycle. Business credit is exempt from nearly all of the federal Truth in Lending rules that govern consumer cards[7], so the protections and disclosures a consumer expects do not automatically apply. There is no public dataset of business card rates; the Federal Reserve's G.19 release reports the average rate on consumer card accounts assessed interest, and business cards are typically priced in the same territory or above it.[13] Carried past the grace period, a card is one of the most expensive instruments here per dollar per month, and its limits rarely reach working-capital size.
Asset-based lending. A senior revolving facility with a borrowing base across receivables, inventory and sometimes equipment, monitored by field examinations and secured by a blanket lien. It fits a larger business — commonly seven figures of revenue — with real collateral and lumpy cash flow that has outgrown factoring. California's disclosure statute defines it precisely: a transaction in which advances are made contingent on the recipient forwarding payments received from third parties for goods or services it supplied.[12] The blanket lien is the clause to understand before signing; what a UCC-1 filing actually does explains why.
Mobilization and contract financing. Capital advanced against a signed contract to fund the costs of starting it — crew, materials, bonds, deposits — before the first progress billing. On federal work it is a formal mechanism: customary progress payments on costs incurred run at 80% of total costs, and 85% for small business concerns[8], and the SBA's Contract CAPLine finances the costs of one or more specific contracts, including the overhead allocable to them.[3] Privately, it is a term product sized to the contract's first 90 days and repaid from its draws. Government contracts and the payment cycle covers the federal version.
This is the table to use. Find your row by the shape of your receipts and the purpose of the shortfall, not by what you think you would be approved for.
The firm’s own product-selection practice, stated from the decision side. The rows are the cash-flow shapes the article defines; the assignments are judgements about fit, not survey results, and a specific file can land differently.
Three things stand out when the products are laid out this way.
Lumpy receipts almost always point at the receivable family first. If someone creditworthy owes you money, the cheapest capital available to you is capital secured by that debt, and it scales with your sales automatically. A staffing agency that factors is not a weak credit; it is using the correct instrument for weekly payroll against net-60 invoices.
Even receipts with no invoices point at the revenue family or a line. A restaurant cannot factor a Tuesday. Its choice is between a revolving line, if it has the history for one, and a revenue-based advance, if it does not or needs the money this week. The difference is the horizon and the price of speed, and the merchant cash advance versus term loan comparison prices it.
Growth needs want the longest horizon you can get. A second location pays for itself over years, so the instrument should end when the expanded revenue has paid it — a term loan, an SBA loan, or a longer-term advance, never a card or a sixty-day facility, however easy the approval.
Take one need — $100,000 — and hold everything constant but the number of days the money is out. Three instruments, each with its price stated: a line of credit at 12% APR, priced on the drawn balance by the day; factoring at 2.5% of the invoice face per thirty days outstanding; and a fixed-fee advance at a 1.20 factor on a four-month term, which is 20% cost of capital and sits inside our published band.
A line accrues by the day and factoring by the period, while a fixed-fee advance costs the same at every horizon — so the ranking of the three changes with the number of days, not with the product.
Stated bases on $100,000: the line at 12% APR accrues $100,000 × 12% × days ÷ 365; factoring charges 2.5% of face per 30 days, so days ÷ 30 × 2.5% × $100,000; the advance is a 1.20 factor on a four-month term (20% cost of capital), fixed at signing at $20,000 whatever the payoff date. The rates are illustrative inputs, not quotes.
The line's cost is $986 at thirty days and $5,918 at a hundred and eighty, because interest accrues. Factoring runs from $2,500 to $15,000 over the same span, because the fee is per period. The advance costs $20,000 at every point on the axis, because the factor rate fixed the payback at signing and the payback amount does not shrink if the money comes back early — the property most owners discover at month four.
Read the crossings, not the endpoints. At thirty days the line is cheapest by a wide margin and the advance is twenty times more expensive; at a hundred and eighty the factoring fee has grown to three-quarters of the advance's fixed cost, and by a year it would exceed it. The instruments do not have a rank. They have a rank at a horizon, and the horizon is a property of your cash-flow shape — a net-60 customer, a four-month season, an eight-month ramp — not of the product.
Two corollaries follow. The cheapest instrument is the one whose pricing basis matches your horizon: per day for short gaps, per period for invoice cycles, fixed for a defined term you will actually use. And an instrument priced for a horizon longer than your need is never made cheap by repaying early unless the contract contains a prepayment discount. APR, factor rate and the math nobody shows you converts any of these into a comparable annualised figure.
Call it Halvorsen Packaging Supply — an illustrative business, not a client — a regional distributor of corrugated boxes and film, three years old, depositing $150,000 a month, with eleven customers, no bank line, and a year in which three separate needs arrive.
Need one: a $100,000 net-60 receivable. A national grocer signs, orders $100,000 of stock, and pays on its standard sixty-day terms. Halvorsen has to pay its own supplier on thirty. The shape is a timing gap on a lumpy receipt owed by a strong payer, and the matrix points at the receivable family. The business factors the invoice: at an 85% advance rate it receives $85,000 the day the invoice is verified, the factor collects $100,000 from the grocer on day sixty, and the reserve of $15,000 comes back less the fee. At 2.5% per thirty days the fee for sixty days is 2 × 2.5% × $100,000 = $5,000, so Halvorsen receives a further $10,000 at settlement. Total cost, $5,000 — and a cost that would have been $1,973 on a bank line at 12% had the business qualified for one, which at three years old with reviewed rather than audited statements it did not.
Need two: $60,000 of forklift and racking. The new account needs more picking capacity. The shape is an asset purchase, and the answer is equipment financing regardless of everything else in the file, because the racking and the truck secure the deal. At 9% APR over thirty-six months the payment is $1,908 a month and the total interest is $8,687 across the term — carried inside the asset's useful life, with the Section 179 election available on the financed purchase.[15] Financing this out of working capital would have consumed the reserve the first need just released; financing it with an advance would have paid a revenue-based price for asset-backed risk.
Need three: $120,000 to open a second warehouse six weeks before a contract starts. A second regional account is signed, conditional on a warehouse near its distribution centre. The lease, fit-out, first hires and opening inventory total $120,000, and the first invoice under the contract is roughly eight months from cash. There is no receivable yet, so the receivable family cannot help; there is no equipment to speak of; and the SBA route — the cheapest capital on the list, at a statutory spread of at most 6.0 points over the base rate for a loan of that size[2] — closes in weeks against a file with full financials, and the contract starts in six. This is the shape a revenue-based advance exists for. At 20% cost of capital on an eight-month term the payback is $144,000, the cost is $24,000, and thirty-five weekly remittances of $4,114 run against weekly deposits of $34,615 — 11.9% of receipts, which clears the business's worst normal week with room, which is the test we actually apply.
For scale, had the SBA loan been available in time: assume a prime rate of 7.5% — the actual figure is on the Federal Reserve's H.15 release[14] — plus the 6.0-point cap that applies between $50,000 and $250,000 gives 13.5%, and $120,000 at 13.5% for eight months is $10,800 of interest before the upfront guaranty fee the lender may pass through.[1] The $13,200 difference is the price of closing inside a week, on bank statements, with no collateral and no lien on the business. Whether that price is worth paying is a question about the contract, not the product: if the second account's margin over the first year exceeds the $24,000 several times, the advance is cheap capital; if it does not, the expansion should wait for the loan. When borrowing is the wrong answer is the test.
Derived from the stated inputs and nothing else: factoring fee = 2 periods × 2.5% × $100,000; equipment interest = 36 level payments at 9% APR on $60,000 less principal; advance cost = 20% × $120,000, remittance = $144,000 ÷ 35; SBA interest = $120,000 × 13.5% × 8 ÷ 12 (the 6.0-point spread is the §120.214 cap for loans over $50,000 up to $250,000). The 7.5% prime rate is an assumption for the arithmetic, not a quotation of the current rate, and the guaranty fee is excluded.
The point of the example is not that each product was the cheapest available. It is that each was matched to a shape — a lumpy receivable, an asset, a growth step with a deadline — and that putting all three needs on one instrument would have cost more on at least two of them.
Each family underwrites different evidence, and knowing which evidence a product reads tells you which product your file is actually strong for.
Schedule-repaid loans read the whole business. A bank term loan or SBA loan is underwritten on two to three years of financial statements, tax returns, a debt service coverage ratio, the owner's personal financial statement and, usually, collateral and a personal guarantee. A business with eighteen months of operations, strong deposits and no formal statements is a weak file here however good the deposits look.
Receivable-backed products read the payer. A factor or an AR lender reads the invoice, the customer's credit and payment history with you, the concentration of your receivables in one or two accounts, and whether the invoices are clean — undisputed, delivered, not subject to set-off. A staffing agency with a rough owner credit file and Fortune 500 clients is a strong factoring file.
Revenue-based products read the bank statements. Speaking for how we look at it: three or more months of statements, deposit consistency, average daily balance, negative days, existing positions and total debt service against revenue. The minimums are three or more months in business and $10,000 a month in revenue; applying uses a soft credit pull only; a decision comes back within 24 business hours and funding within 24 hours of approval, with files submitted before 2pm ET able to fund the same day. Roughly 90% of applicants are approved, which is only possible because the decision is not primarily a credit decision. How working capital underwriting actually works is the full account.
Asset-secured products read the asset — its cost, resale value, age and useful life — with the borrower's file second. Contract financing reads the contract: who awarded it, whether it is signed and funded, its payment terms, whether it is bonded, and what has already been assigned against it.
The practical use of this list is diagnostic. A bank decline is information about your history and statements, not about your business: the same file may be a strong factoring file if you have creditworthy customers, a strong equipment file if the need is an asset, or a strong revenue-based file if the deposits are consistent. A decline in one family is not a decline in the others.
The legal frame differs by family more than most borrowers realise, and it decides what you are actually signing. This is information, not legal advice; the statute and the contract control, and an attorney in your state should read yours.
Business credit is largely outside consumer protection law. Regulation Z, the federal Truth in Lending rule, exempts credit extended primarily for a business, commercial or agricultural purpose.[7] That is why no federal rule requires a commercial product to state an APR, why business cards lack the consumer card protections, and why an advance's price can lawfully be quoted as a factor. A growing list of states has filled part of that gap, and the two broadest regimes are worth reading. New York's Commercial Finance Disclosure Law requires providers to disclose the financing amount, finance charge, an annual percentage rate, total repayment amount, term and payment amounts for each category it names — sales-based financing, closed-end, open-end and factoring among them — with factoring disclosures stating the purchase price paid, the finance charge, an estimated APR and the receivables purchased.[11] California's Commercial Financing Disclosures division does the same and defines both accounts receivable purchase transactions and asset-based lending transactions in statute.[12] In either state, the disclosure is the document to compare offers on.
Factoring is a sale, and it is filed like a loan. Article 9 brings a sale of accounts within its scope alongside security interests[9], and once an account is sold the seller retains no legal or equitable interest in it.[10] The factor perfects by filing a UCC-1 against your receivables, your customers may be notified to pay the factor directly, and a later lender searching the filings finds the factor first in the queue. Recourse — whether an unpaid invoice can be charged back to you — is a schedule in the agreement, not a label on the product.
Asset-based lending and most bank lines carry a blanket lien — a financing statement whose collateral description reaches all of the debtor's assets, now owned or later acquired. It sits across everything the next facility would want and can block a surety's view of your receivables. Equipment financing files against the equipment only, which is one reason it stacks cleanly with other products.
Government programs are governed by regulation. The 7(a) program's maximums, guaranty percentages and fee pass-through are set by the SBA[1], its variable-rate caps by 13 CFR §120.214[2], its line-of-credit variants by the CAPLines rules[3], and the microloan program's limits and uses by its own terms[4]; federal progress payments run at the customary rates the FAR sets.[8] The rules are public and do not move with the lender's mood.
Two clauses to read on any product. A personal guarantee — an owner's promise to pay a business obligation from personal assets if the business does not — appears on most products in this list, including many bank lines, and it survives the company's closure. A confession of judgment — a pre-signed consent to a judgment against the business or its guarantor — appears in some advance agreements and should be a reason to walk. Our agreements contain no confession of judgment, and we file no UCC-1 lien against the funded business; personal guarantees explains what the first one actually commits you to.
Every product on the list has negotiable terms, and the ones granted are rarely the ones borrowers ask about first. In the order we see them conceded:
Stated bluntly, because the wrong-fit sale is the one that produces the surveyed surprise.
A product being the wrong tool is not a judgement on the business; the same business is usually the right file for a different row.
We are one row, and it is worth being exact about which. Full Send Funding funds working capital as a defined-term facility from $5,000 to $10,000,000 on terms from four months to three years, repaid by a fixed daily or weekly ACH remittance matched to how the business is paid — daily for a business paid at the till, weekly for a contractor paid in draws — alongside revolving lines from $10,000 to $2,000,000 and equipment financing where the asset secures the deal, all underwritten on revenue and bank activity with a soft credit pull only and priced at 4.5% to 45% cost of capital depending on qualifications and term length. That makes us the right row for a defined gap with an end — a season, a large order, a contract mobilization, a receivable that is late but coming — in a business too young or too lightly documented for a bank, with no invoices it can sell, or with a deadline a bank cannot meet. It makes us the wrong row for a permanent balance, which is cheaper on a structure that revolves, and for a need that can wait for an SBA loan, where the SBA loan is cheaper and we will say so. Two comparisons sit between those. For an asset, the equipment product is cheaper and we will structure it that way. For a sixty-day gap owed by a strong payer, factoring the invoice is often the cheaper instrument — $5,000 in the worked example against the $20,000 fixed cost of the four-month advance in the figure above — and we will say that too; it is a comparison to run on the numbers, not a rule that sends every such business to a factor, because a business that cannot notify its customers, cannot sell that particular invoice, or is already carrying a factor’s UCC-1 is back in our row. One structural point inside the row: a daily remittance is the wrong shape for lumpy receipts and we do not write one against them; a weekly remittance sized to the draws is the variant that fits a subcontractor or a distributor paid in lumps, and it is the shape construction financing describes. The side-by-side comparison of funding options states the same on one page, and the loan comparison tool prices any two offers you actually hold against each other.
The product is picked by the shape of your cash flow — rhythm, purpose, season, and whether there is an asset, invoice or contract behind the need — and the credit score only sets the price inside it. Twelve products sort into four families by what repays them: schedule-repaid loans that read your history, receivable-backed products that read your customer, revenue-based advances that read your bank statements, and equipment financing that reads the asset. Cost is horizon multiplied by instrument, not a rank: a line is cheapest for days, factoring for invoice cycles, and a fixed-fee advance is priced for the term it was written on and costs the same if repaid early. Match the term to the horizon, the payment rhythm to the receipts, and the security to the asset if there is one — those three levers are granted more readily than any rate concession, and they decide more.
If you want the shape of your own file read directly, check what you would qualify for — a minute, soft pull only — or call 518-312-0382 and ask which row you are, including if the answer is not ours.
The cost-by-horizon figure and the worked example are derived, not surveyed. Each applies the rate stated for it — 12% APR on a line accruing daily, 2.5% of face per thirty days for factoring, a 1.20 factor on a four-month advance, 9% APR over thirty-six level payments for equipment, 20% cost of capital on an eight-month advance, and an assumed 7.5% prime rate plus the 6.0-point statutory spread cap for a loan between $50,000 and $250,000 for the SBA comparison — to the amounts and horizons stated in the prose. The site’s arithmetic audit recomputes every published value from those inputs before publication; the rates are illustrative and are not quotes, and any of them can be replaced with a reader’s own.
The product matrix and the decision matrix are the firm’s own product-selection practice, stated from the decision side. Program limits, guaranty percentages, rate caps, maturities and progress-payment rates for the government programs are quoted from the primary texts cited — the SBA’s published 7(a) and microloan terms, 13 CFR §120.214 and FAR 32.501-1 — and the legal characterisation of factoring, business credit and the state disclosure regimes from the statutes and code sections cited. Where no public dataset exists, as for business credit card rates or factoring fees, the article says so rather than supplying a figure.
The Small Business Credit Survey figures are quoted from the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2026 report on employer firms, a nationwide convenience sample of 6,525 firms with 1 to 499 employees fielded from September 3 to November 14, 2025. They are offered as scale and as evidence of the fit problem the article describes, not as measurements of any product’s cost; the survey does not attribute the reported cost surprise to product fit, and that reading is the firm’s. The firm’s own figures — sizing, terms, cost-of-capital range, approval rate and timelines — are its published bar.
The one whose repayment source matches your cash-flow shape. Even daily receipts with no invoices fit a line of credit or a revenue-based advance; lumpy receipts owed by creditworthy customers fit invoice factoring or a receivable line; an asset purchase fits equipment financing; a large, long-horizon need in a business with financial statements fits an SBA 7(a) loan. There is no single best product, only a best product for a shape and a horizon.
For a short gap, almost always: a line accrues interest only on the days the money is drawn, while an advance’s factor rate fixes the payback at signing and does not shrink if the money is repaid early. On $100,000 for sixty days, a line at 12% costs about $1,973 and a 1.20-factor advance costs $20,000. The advance is priced for the term it was written on and for a business that has no line, which is where the comparison actually starts.
When your receipts are lumpy and owed by creditworthy customers on net-30 to net-90 terms, and you need the cash before they pay. Factoring is sized to the invoice rather than to you, so it scales with sales and works for a young business with a rough owner credit file and strong customers. It makes less sense when invoices are disputed or milestone-based, when a contract prohibits assignment, or when the margin is thin enough that a monthly fee erases it.
Most 7(a) loans are capped at $5,000,000, with the SBA guaranteeing up to 85% of loans of $150,000 or less and 75% above that; since July 2026 a borrower may combine 7(a) and 504 loans for up to $10,000,000. Variable rates are capped at a spread over the base rate of 6.5 points for loans of $50,000 or less, falling to 3.0 points above $350,000, plus an upfront guaranty fee the lender may pass on. The trade is time: the program expects full financial statements and closes in weeks.
Cash-flow shape is the pattern of your receipts: even or lumpy, a timing gap or a growth step, a flat or peaked year, and whether an asset, invoice or contract stands behind the need. It matters because each product is repaid from a different source — operating cash, a customer’s payment, revenue as it arrives, or the asset itself — and a product whose repayment source does not match your receipts will be refinanced whatever the rate. Credit score sets the price inside the product; the shape picks the product.
Bank term loans, bank lines and asset-based facilities usually carry a blanket lien across all business assets and a personal guarantee. Factoring files a UCC-1 against the receivables sold. Equipment financing files against the equipment only. SBA 7(a) loans take available collateral and a personal guarantee. Full Send Funding’s working capital products require no collateral and carry no UCC-1 lien against the business; equipment financing, where the equipment secures the deal, is the stated exception.
Revenue-based advances and short-term products underwritten on bank statements are the fastest: at Full Send Funding a decision comes within 24 business hours and funding within 24 hours of approval, with files submitted before 2pm ET able to fund the same day and one to three business days typical end to end. Factoring is fast once the customer is verified. Equipment financing takes days. Bank lines, asset-based facilities and SBA loans are measured in weeks, because they read full financial statements.
Travis Yule founded Full Send Funding in 2021 and leads it from Middle Grove, New York. He writes about working capital from the underwriting side of the table — what the numbers actually have to say before a business gets funded.