In order to meet the day-to-day financial obligations of their business, like fuel, payroll, etc, freight companies can ill afford unpaid invoices for a month or two. They need immediate cash flow, which is thankfully provided by various factoring companies. As a freight company when you decide to get your accounts receivable factored you need to follow a clear-cut procedure. You cannot afford to ignore the necessary guidelines or your factoring request would be turned down.

After your factoring company receives the necessary paperwork from you they would process the documents. They would send a valid invoice to the consignee and receive payment from them.

Remember, you cannot send your freight bills directly to a factoring company. You will have to fill out a prescribed application form for every freight bill, which you then submit either online or faxed. Normally on receiving your freight bills, duly signed by you, factoring companies disburse funds within hours. Make sure to avail the different kinds of discounts most factoring companies offer. Some of them insist that once you start factoring freight bills for a particular customer you must continue to factor all future consignments meant for that customer, unless you inform them beforehand that you intend to bill that customer yourself. In such cases all factored open invoices must be closed before your customer receives a release letter from the factoring company you have been dealing with.

You may follow these steps for you factoring requirements:

Ring up a couple of factoring companies. Talk to them and find out their rates, and business terms and conditions. Usually, they quote their rates on the basis of your client's credit, the age of your invoices, the amount of your invoices, etc. The rates are also implicitly determined by the amount of risk the factoring companies perceive in the invoices.

Make sure bills/invoices factored are valid. Billing is strictly based on the goods or services being rendered by your company and is acceptable to your customer. Also determine the creditworthiness of the account debtors in accordance with the requested line of credit.

While filling out the form to be submitted to the factoring company state clearly the name of the business firm, address and the amount of money you expect. Be careful while summarizing and calculating the amount.

After sending your application allows some time to the factoring company to work on it. They will assess your case on the basis of your performance and business references mentioned on your application.

Look forward to receiving a contract that you have to sign and get notarized by the concerned person or people. You can enclose fresh invoices for disbursement while sending back the executed contract to the factoring company.

Depending upon the factoring company you can expect up to 90% funding on face value of the invoice. When the factoring company receives payment on the invoice from your customer they would pay you the remaining amount.

After you have done your job you can monitor the progress of your business on the web system provided by most factoring companies. Many of them regularly send web reports and online information.