Financial solutions for Recruitment Agency

The prospects for a setting up a recruitment business are exciting. If you have worked in recruitment and are an experienced consultant, you will know exactly what is involved and the potential of working for yourself.

However, even if you have gained that experience in a lucrative niche sector, you must remember that you will face fierce competition as a recruitment business owner. However hard you work, you will not have all the contacts you need immediately, and without adequate funding, you could find yourself facing cashflow problems. Without financial solutions, they could drag your business under.

It’s not just in the early days of your business that you need a source of funding. Operating and growing your business will bring new challenges and new needs for investment.

Your biggest need may be support for your cashflow - but setting up and running your business will mean many other financal challenges.

Fortunately, at Rangewell, we know the answers to your funding needs - and we can help you find the financial support you need at every stage of your recruitment business.

Understanding your funding options

You may need to find the right type of funding option to allow you to:

• Deal with your cashflow challenges
• Set up a new recruitment business
• Buy into an existing recruitment business
• Acquire equipment and assets
• Acquire premises
• Provide working capital
• Deal with tax

Dealing with cashflow challenges

Cashflow is a constant problem for recruitment businesses for three clear reasons:

• Your business has fixed costs - Your offices, staff, advertising and other overheads will be regular fixed costs. They are unlikely to vary much, even when business is in a slowdown
• Clients have unpredictable needs - Many clients will only need to recruit sporadically. This makes your payments landscape very unpredictable. It can be hard for you to plan ahead
• Long probation periods - Your clients will demand a window of several months for an employee to settle in and prove their worth before they will make a final payment for the service. At the very least, this means waiting three months before you can expect to get full payment - and in some professional sectors, it can be closer to six months

Long delays in getting paid can even mean that positive spells of business growth can be a problem. They can mean more costs and larger sums to find while still facing the same wait for payments to arrive.

There are a number of solutions for cashflow needs.

Invoice Finance

Invoice Finance offers a popular solution for recruitment businesses with cashflow issues.

Rather than having to wait up to 120 days for an invoice to be paid, it lets you take up to 90% of the value of each invoice immediately. The remainder will be paid to you, minus fees, once the customer settles the outstanding balance.

Invoice Financing provides an ongoing credit facility that protects you against late payment – because it ensures you get paid fast even when customers are slow.

Working Capital Finance

Working Capital Finance is often used to deal with overheads while business is slow during the early weeks and months, or during a slow season period of growth. It is a loan usually designed to be repaid in the short- to medium-term, once your recruitment business is fully profitable.

Growth Finance

Larger scale lending can be vital to support cashflow if you have major plans such as taking on more staff or acquiring a competitor. Growth Finance is a type of lending that may be able to provide the solution. Lenders may require an established trading history and record of profits, but it may be possible to arrange Growth Finance based on your profit projections, rather than on your trading history.

Borrowing

Borrowing to keep a cash reserve can be another solution to ongoing cashflow issues. We work with lenders across the UK market and can help you secure the most competitive Secured and Unsecured business loans.

Overdraft replacement

Short-term cashflow issues used to be dealt with by a bank overdraft. These days, overdrafts have become harder to get - fortunately, there are now some Overdraft Replacement products that work in a similar way.

Setting up a new recruitment business

Although it may be possible to work as a recruitment consultant with little more than a list of contacts, a mobile phone and a laptop, it cannot be a long term solution.

Working from home will keep your initial costs low, but you may need to rent office space to present a professional approach to potential clients. There will be other costs, from setting up a website and arranging publicity to legal fees and insurance.

You should be able to calculate all your funding needs as part of a detailed business plan. You should look at all your likely outgoings for a minimum of six months. It may take that long for the candidates you place to earn you your full commission once they pass their probationary periods.

Lenders may be reluctant to lend to start-ups, preferring to make their decisions based on evidence of previous business performance. Most expect to see accounts for one or two year’s trading before making the decision to lend.

At Rangewell we know the lenders who are able to take a more positive approach and can often help arrange funding for start-up ventures with sound business plans, from people with the necessary expertise, based on solutions such as Secured or Unsecured loans.

Buying into an existing recruitment practice

You may wish to buy into an existing recruitment business as a partner, or even buy it outright. The costs involved may depend on the turnover and contracts it currently has, as well as the assets it currently owns.

We can help you secure a number of solutions to let you buy into an established business. Though the costs may be considerably higher than those required for a start-up, the ability to demonstrate profitability can help secure funds at a competitive rate.

A Secured Loan is one solution for acquisition. Another is a ‘jigsaw’ finance deal, which uses a variety of funding types to provide the most cost-effective funding for each aspect of your finance needs.

Funding for your equipment

Whether you are starting up, buying into an existing business, or ready to move your current operation on, you will need office equipment. Your IT setup, your computers and printer will be expensive items, and you may need specialised software with operating licenses and renewals, training and maintenance. You will also need to furnish your office.

At Rangewell we can help you find the Asset Finance solutions you need.

Hire Purchase

For basic equipment that you want to go on giving service for many years, Hire Purchase (HP) may provide the simple way to spread costs.

You pay a deposit plus monthly instalments over a fixed term, between 6 and 60 months, after which the equipment becomes yours. Payments are fixed, making it easy to plan ahead and to arrange an agreement that is tailored to your monthly turnover and budget.

Office furniture might be ideal for HP finance.

Leasing

Leasing will give you freedom and flexibility and avoid the need to make any capital investment. There is usually no upfront cost to find, making it simple to bring the latest equipment such as IT into your business. It can make higher cost items more affordable by spreading the cost over their economic life.

Funding for premises

You may be able to start your recruitment business in a catered office in a business centre - although you may soon find that you need premises of your own to establish the status of your business with clients and candidates.

The cost of renting a small office will depend on your location, and the square footage you need. You may need premises in a busy town or city centre, and it may be best to take on more space than might be strictly necessary to allow you to take on assistants or a partner in the future. There may be service charges and business rates on top of the bare lease. You may need upfront funding to secure the agreement - we can provide a number of solutions to help you.

However, renting means ongoing costs, and puts your practice at risk of rent increases. Buying your premises with a Commercial Mortgage could actually decrease your monthly outgoings, and provide your business with a valuable asset for the future. Commercial Mortgages can help you buy your premises or even an existing consultancy. It is uneconomic to borrow less than £50,000, and some lenders have a minimum of £75,000 or more, but there is no set upper limit.

Commercial Property Finance is arranged on an individual basis. We may be able to help you secure preferential rates that reflect your professional status.

Remember, if you already own your premises, a Commercial Mortgage might be a cost-effective way to raise funds to use elsewhere in your business.

Provide working capital

We can also help with a number of specialised loan products:

Tax Loans

Tax is inevitable, but a large quarterly VAT or annual tax demand can cause problems with your cash flow, particularly when it falls at the same time as other costs. Tax Loans help you to spread the cost of your tax demands into affordable monthly payments.

• Better control of cash flow
• Fixed monthly payments
• Quick and simple to arrange
• Avoids issues with HMRC, potential penalties and professional liabilities

How we help you capitalise your recruitment business

At Rangewell, our expertise works to bring you the financial solutions you need to capitalise your business, whether you want to fund capital expenses, working capital or growth.

Finding the most appropriate solution for your funding needs takes a thorough understanding both of the lending market, and the products available on it.

At Rangewell, we know the lenders who can offer the most competitive rates for all types of finance, including Unsecured and Secured Loans, Invoice Finance, Asset Finance, Merchant Cash Advance, Commercial Mortgages, Growth Finance and more.

Whether you have a straightforward finance need or require something more complex, like a complicated ‘Jigsaw’ funding plan made up of a combination of products, we can work with you to find the answers that are right for your needs.

Call us now to get our experts working for you and your recruitment business.