Insights · US edition

Factoring insights from the people who write the courses.

Short, practical pieces on fraud, collections and reading financial statements, for teams at factors, ABL lenders and their clients.

Featured · Collections · 6 min read

What your funder needs from your collections team

If your business factors its receivables, your collections team is doing two jobs at once. Here is what your funder relies on you for, and why it decides how much cash your facility makes available.

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Collections · 6 min read

The collection call: five objections and how to answer them

Almost every collection call ends with one of five answers. Each one has a response that keeps the call moving toward a date, an amount and a name.

Fraud · 6 min read

Diverted payments: how they happen and how to spot them

When a customer pays your client instead of your lockbox, the receivable you financed is gone and the aging 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 a CPA to get the important answers from a client's balance sheet. Eight questions, in order, tell a lender most of what it needs to know.

Collections · 6 min read

Reading an A/R aging report

The A/R aging is the one page that says the most about a client's receivables. Read it in the right order and it tells you who to call, what to question and where the risk is.

Fraud · 6 min read

Ten warning signs of factoring fraud

Most factoring fraud shows up in the receivables long before the money is gone. These are the ten signs an account executive or collector is best placed to catch.

Learning · 5 min read

Learning paths by role

A collector and an account executive both need to understand fraud, but not in the same depth or from the same angle. Building training around the job, not the catalog, is what gets it finished.

Collections · 5 min read

Offering training to your clients: why lenders do it

On a non-notification facility, your client's own collections team runs the receivables you lend against, often without ever being told how the facility works. Training them is one of the cheapest ways a lender can reduce risk.

Collections · 5 min read

When to escalate a past-due account

Most past-due invoices are paid after a call and an email. For the few that aren't, escalation is a decision, not a reflex. Here is how to make it well on financed receivables, and where the lender comes in.

Financial statements · 5 min read

Interim statements or year-end statements: what each tells a lender

Year-end statements are checked but late. Interim statements are timely but unchecked. A lender 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.

Collections · 5 min read

Credit memos, offsets and dilution

Not every dollar invoiced turns into a dollar collected. Credit memos, offsets, discounts and deductions all reduce what financed receivables are worth. Dilution is the measure of that gap, and it decides how much a lender can safely advance.

Financial statements · 5 min read

Profit is not cash

A business can report net income every month and still run out of money. For a lender, understanding why is the difference between funding growth and funding a collapse.

Fraud · 5 min read

Why case scenarios teach fraud better than rules

Most people can recite the warning signs of factoring 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

DSO, DPO and inventory days

Three ratios turn a balance sheet into a story about time. Calculated properly, they show how long a client waits to be paid, how long it takes to pay its vendors, and how long its inventory sits before it sells.

Collections · 5 min read

Collection emails that get paid

Most collection 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 customer who doesn't exist

An invoice for goods never shipped looks exactly like a real one. The difference shows up in the customer 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 collector 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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