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Insights · UK edition

Invoice finance insights from the people who write the courses.

Short, practical pieces on fraud, credit control and reading accounts, for teams at invoice financiers and their clients.

Featured · Credit control · 6 min read

What your funder needs from your credit control

If your business uses invoice finance, your credit control is doing two jobs at once. Here is what your funder relies on you for, and why it decides how much cash the facility gives you.

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Credit control · 6 min read

The collection call: handling the five objections you hear every day

Almost every chasing call ends in one of five answers. Each has a reply that keeps the call moving towards a date, an amount and a name.
Fraud · 6 min read

Diverted payments: how they happen and how to spot them

When a debtor pays your client instead of the account you control, the debt you funded is gone and the ledger still says it's there. Here is how diversion works, and the checks that find it.
Financial statements · 6 min read

Reading a balance sheet in ten minutes

You don't need to be an accountant to get the important answers from a client's balance sheet. Eight questions, in order, tell a financier most of what it needs to know.
Credit control · 6 min read

Reading an aged debt report

An aged debt report is the one page that says most about a client's ledger. Read it in the right order and it tells you who to call, what to question and where the risk sits.
Fraud · 6 min read

Ten warning signs of invoice finance fraud

Most invoice finance fraud shows on the ledger long before the money goes. These are the ten signs a client manager or credit controller is best placed to see.
Learning · 5 min read

Training records: what to keep for auditors and regulators

"Yes, the team has been trained" is easy to say and hard to prove. A few well-kept records turn it into evidence that stands up to an auditor, a funder or a regulator.
Learning · 5 min read

Learning paths by role

A credit controller and a client manager both need to understand fraud, but not in the same depth or from the same angle. Building training around the job, not the catalogue, is what makes people finish it.
Credit control · 5 min read

Offering training to your clients: why financiers do it

On a confidential facility, your client's credit controller runs the ledger you lend against, often without ever being told how the facility works. Training them is one of the cheapest ways a financier can reduce risk.
Credit control · 5 min read

When to escalate: from final demand to court

Most overdue invoices are paid after a call and an email. For the few that aren't, there is a clear path from a letter before action to a claim, and in the right cases a statutory demand. Here is how it works, and where the financier comes in.
Financial statements · 5 min read

Management accounts or filed accounts: what each tells a lender

Filed accounts are checked but late. Management accounts are timely but unchecked. A financier needs both, and needs to know exactly what each can and can't be trusted to say.
Learning · 5 min read

Rolling out a course library: a 90-day plan

Buying a course library is the easy part. A simple plan for the first three months turns access into a team that has actually done the training, and keeps doing it.
Credit control · 5 min read

Credit notes, contras and dilution

Not every pound invoiced turns into a pound collected. Credit notes, contras, discounts and deductions all reduce what a funded ledger is worth. Dilution is the measure of that gap, and it decides how much a financier can safely lend.
Financial statements · 5 min read

Profit is not cash

A business can make a profit every month and still run out of money. For a financier, understanding why is the difference between funding growth and funding a collapse.
Credit control · 5 min read

Credit periods by sector, and why they matter to a financier

Sixty days overdue means one thing for a haulier invoicing a supermarket and something else for a recruiter invoicing a building firm. Reading a ledger well starts with knowing what normal looks like in the client's trade.
Fraud · 5 min read

Why case scenarios teach fraud better than rules

Most people can recite the warning signs of invoice finance fraud. Far fewer act on them when the signs arrive one at a time, on a busy day, about a client they like. Case scenarios teach the part a list can't.
Financial statements · 5 min read

Debtor, creditor and stock days

Three ratios turn a balance sheet into a story about time. Worked out properly, they show how long a client waits for its money, how long it makes its suppliers wait, and how long its goods sit on the shelf.
Credit control · 5 min read

Chasing by email that gets paid

Most chasing emails are easy to ignore because they ask for nothing in particular. An email that names the invoices, asks for one thing and follows a clear sequence gets answered. Here is how to write one.
Fraud · 5 min read

Fictitious invoices and the debtor who doesn't exist

An invoice for goods never supplied looks exactly like a real one. The difference shows up in the debtor behind it, the paperwork around it and the way it gets paid. Here is what to check.
Learning · 5 min read

Refreshers: why knowledge fades, and what stops it

Most of what a credit controller learns about fraud is needed rarely and suddenly. Short refreshers, spaced out over months, keep it ready for the day it matters.

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