How the funding actually works.
The mechanics behind the product pages. How working capital is calculated and why a healthy figure can sit beside an empty account, what the cash conversion cycle measures, how receivables fees are actually priced, and what an import cycle costs from order to payment.
What working capital is
The formula takes ten seconds. What the answer means takes longer, and the gap between a healthy number and a business that can pay its bills this week is where most of the useful thinking lives.
Read onThe working capital cycle
The cash conversion cycle measures how long a dollar spends inside the business before it comes back. It is the single most useful number in working capital, and almost nobody calculates it.
Read onWhat lenders assess
Working capital lending is assessed on trading rather than on assets. That makes the bank statements the file, and it makes several things visible that a business does not realise it is showing.
Read onInvoice finance against factoring
Invoice finance, factoring and debtor finance are used interchangeably in the market and are not the same thing. Two questions separate them, and everything else follows from those two.
Read onDisclosed against confidential
It is the first decision in receivables funding and the one commonly made on instinct. The instinct is usually to stay confidential, and it is not always right.
Read onWhat invoice finance actually costs
Receivables funding is quoted in a way that makes offers hard to compare and easy to underestimate. The arithmetic that fixes both takes about five minutes.
Read onTrade finance for NZ importers
Importing into New Zealand carries the longest cash cycle in ordinary commerce. Funding it properly starts with knowing what the cycle actually is, and most importers have never measured theirs.
Read onWhere to start
Seven guides, in the order most people need them.
The product pages answer what each facility is. These guides answer why the answers are what they are, and they are worth reading in roughly this order.
What working capital is covers the formula and the ratio, and more usefully covers why a healthy figure on paper can sit alongside an empty bank account. The working capital cycle adds the timing the formula leaves out, and it is the single most useful measurement on this site because it converts days into dollars and shows which of them can be recovered without borrowing.
Invoice finance against factoring separates three products that the market names inconsistently, and disclosed against confidential examines the decision that separates them most sharply. What invoice finance actually costs takes the fee structures apart and converts a typical quote into one annual number, which is the arithmetic that makes two proposals comparable.
Trade finance for New Zealand importers walks a full import cycle stage by stage, including the landed costs that most facilities are sized without. What lenders assess covers the application itself, and what a bank statement shows that a business does not realise it is showing.
How these are written
Primary sources, hedged numbers, no borrowed copy.
Every numeric or regulatory claim in these guides links to a primary New Zealand source the first time it appears. Inland Revenue for GST and tax dates, the Companies Office for the Personal Property Securities Register, New Zealand Customs for duty and clearance, the External Reporting Board for accounting standards, and the Reserve Bank for rate and currency context.
Nothing here is paraphrased from a comparison site or from a funder’s marketing pages. That is a deliberate rule rather than a preference. Paraphrasing another publisher adopts their claims, including any that were never substantiated, and a claim adopted second-hand is still one this site would have to stand behind.
Where a number cannot be sourced, it is hedged or it is cut. No sector benchmarks for collection days or cycle length appear anywhere on this site, because published averages vary by source and by definition, and a figure quoted without its definition is worse than none.
FAQ
About these guides
How often are these guides reviewed?
Each carries a last-reviewed date on the page and in the sitemap, and that date moves when the content is genuinely revised rather than on a schedule. Fee conventions, lender practice and tax dates all move, so a stale date on a money topic is worse than no date at all.
Who writes them?
Each guide names its author and their role in the byline, and that name is emitted as a Person in the page’s structured data rather than as the site itself. On a money topic the identity of whoever stands behind the content is part of what a reader is entitled to see.
Do the guides recommend a particular facility?
No. They set out what each does and who it tends to suit, and stop there. The right facility depends on the shape of the gap, the ledger and the trading position, and a page recommending one without seeing those would be giving advice rather than information.
Do they recommend a funder?
No. Funders are described generically, by the kind of institution rather than by name, because a specific comparison would need current pricing that cannot be substantiated on a page that stays up for months. The one relationship this site has is with Prospa, and it is disclosed on every page.
Why do the tax sections keep mentioning an accountant?
Because the treatment genuinely depends on facts this site cannot see. The accounting basis, the timing of a return and the specific arrangement all change the answer, and the accountant is the person with the whole picture. The caveat appears at each claim rather than once at the bottom.
Why are there no benchmark figures?
Because published averages for collection days, cycle length and facility pricing vary considerably by source and by how they were defined, and a benchmark quoted without its definition invites a business to compare itself against something it does not understand. The useful comparison is a business against its own history.
Is anything here personalised financial advice?
No. Everything on this site is general information about how a class of finance works, which is what New Zealand’s financial advice regime calls class information. Personalised recommendations require a Financial Advice Provider licence this site does not hold.