Every business with commercial customers finances those customers. The only question is whether the terms are deliberate. When days sales outstanding drifts from 38 to 61, the business has quietly extended a substantial unsecured loan to its customer base.
Signals worth acting on
Aging concentrated in a handful of accounts. Payment behavior that has changed without a conversation. Invoices that go out days after work is complete. Disputes that sit unresolved because no one owns them.
Each of those is an operational fix before it is a financing question. Tightening invoicing and collections often releases more cash, faster and cheaper, than any facility would.
When financing is the right response
If customers are creditworthy, terms are contractual, and the gap is simply large, receivable-based structures — a line secured by AR, factoring, or asset-based lending — convert the asset into liquidity without adding fixed term debt.
The considerations are cost, notification, concentration limits, and how the facility behaves in a slow quarter. Those details matter more than the headline advance rate.