Accounts Receivable Financing

  

You make unicycles. You've sold 800 of them to the Giraffe Watchers Club of the Serengeti. They owe you a million bucks. Unfortunately, they won't be back from safari for a month, assuming the lions don't get to them first. But you need that million bucks today, so you can build out the unicycle order for The Congressional Clown Club, otherwise known as Congress.

To get that money, you can apply for accounts receivable financing, wherein you pledge as collateral the promise of payment of that million bucks from the Giraffe Watchers Club, owed 27 days from now. You can take the money to a bank, or to what is called a factor, who will then gladly pay you something like $970,000 today in return for your million bucks I.O.U. in about a month. The factor takes on the risk of the Giraffe Watchers Club becoming lion dinner and not paying, and in return, if you do the advanced math here, that factor makes 3% interest for that one month of risk, or an annualized return of 12 x 3% = 36%. As long as those owing their bills actually pay their bills, the business of being an accounts receivable financier is enormously lucrative. You just have to stay away from the lions.

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Finance: What is cash flow v earnings?17 Views

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Finance allah shmoop what is cash flow versus earnings Okay

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you think profits or profits right Well not unless you

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spell it P r o p h e t s

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Ask a gandhi or jeff bezos about that All right

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Well in the land of accounting there are aptly named

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accounting profits and there are also cash profits and the

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two of them are often very different Accounting laws skew

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things when it comes to assessing riel cash profits Here's

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out the ceo and founder of give a dog a

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drone A company that specializes in engineering remote control toys

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for your pets built a drone stamping factory for one

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hundred million dollars knowing that it will be worth twenty

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million dollars in scrap value in just four years Well

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he'll sell at that point and possibly upgrade if demand

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for puppy and kitty tech is still high will drone

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sales or steady producing cash profits of fifty million bucks

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a year each year into the foreseeable future but stated

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earnings and cash flows here are very different In the

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first year when the factory was built the company lost

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big cash money because it had to write one hundred

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Million dollar check to the builder of the factory Yes

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it made fifty million in profits but that year it

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lost fifty million dollars in cash Luckily it had no

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debt and it had one hundred twenty five million dollars

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in the bank Well that bank account went down to

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just twenty five million when they wrote one hundred million

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dollar check But it gradually filled back up to seventy

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five million by the time that year was done fifty

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million of profits and that fifty million in cash Yeah

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that that helps that floated right back in there Okay

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so the cash that year was volatile It was a

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hundred twenty five million to start But then i went

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down to twenty five million after the factory purchase than

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end up a year later with fifty million added to

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their coffers and gas profits from operation leaving them with

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seventy five million bucks in the bank got all that

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All right So here's where the difference hits between accounting

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profits perspective and a cash flow perspective on the notion

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of profit Simply put it isn't fair for the company

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Tohave a view that the one hundred million dollars factory

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as an expense should all hit the profits line all

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in one year as if they bore the burden of

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all that factory cost in one year and then showing

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it is being worthless in years Two three four and

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maybe beyond In fact the company doing proper accounting depreciates

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that factory in value to the tune of twenty million

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dollars a year for for four years until it will

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then sell it for scrap for twenty million bucks So

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that hit to the company in the first year should

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be twenty million dollars in value not one hundred million

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in cash That's an accounting change of assessing twenty million

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in expenses not one hundred million how's that work well

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the decline in value of that hundred million dollars takes

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five years And it looks like this But in your

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won the company loses one hundred million dollars in cash

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but gains a factory Confused Good Okay well let's zoom

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forward to your floor The company again made fifty million

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dollars in cash profits but it will show earnings of

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only thirty million Why Well because proper accounting using straight

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lined appreciation of that hundred million dollar factory properly shows

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the company depreciating it's value another twenty million dollars against

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its cash profitability So what A thirty percent tax rate

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company pays taxes on thirty million of profits or a

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tax bill of nine million bucks It's accounting earnings are

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actually twenty one million dollars but it will have produced

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cash or cash flow of fifty million dollars minus the

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nine million in taxes or forty one million in cash

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profits I either Cash flow is almost double the reported

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accounting profits Now with all that profit our company can

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