We like to make it as easy as possible for our clients to do business with us and have produced for you a list of the most commonly used terms and phrases that you may come across when making use of a factoring and invoice discounting facility.
Advance: This is the amount of money that we advance to you the day following receipt of your invoices and is expressed as a percentage i.e. 80% of the invoice value will be advanced to you.
Approved Debt: We take the value of the invoices sent by you and reduce it by the level of disapprovals such as aged invoices, disputes or exceeded credit limits, and the amount left thereof is your approved debt.
Assignment: When an invoice is raised and sent to Bibby Financial Services it is effectively sold to us, otherwise known as assigned to.
Audit: A review carried out by Bibby Financial Services to ensure that the conditions of your agreement are being met. The audit may be done by Bibby or through an external agency.
Availability: This relates to the amount of funding that you have available to use at this point in time. Once you request it we will forward it to you.
Bad Debt Protection: A facility that protects your business against a possible bad debt. However, in India, Bibby Financial Services sanctions factoring facilities with recourse option only, which means that if we fail to recover our dues from the debtor, we shall approach you as our client to settle our outstanding.
Blanket Cover: A minimum credit limit that we will apply to all your customers, subject to no adverse credit information being received.
Collections: These are the payments we receive from your customers/debtors.
Concentration: The level, often expressed as a percentage, to which we will fund one single customer of your total approved debt.
Contra: A contra is where two companies are both suppliers and customers of each other.
Cover Limit: The amount of bad debt protection provided by Bibby Financial Services against each of your individual customers.
Credit Limits: The credit limit (debtor limit) that we place on each of your customers e.g. Rs 20 million. This means invoices totalling up to Rs 20 million can be funded by BFSI. Additional invoices for that debtor will be funded only when re-payment for some invoices funded earlier has been received.
Current Account: The total amount of funds paid to you including any charges at any given time.
Disapproval: Is a collective term covering any reason why an invoice has not been funded e.g. due to age, credit limits, contras, disputes etc.
Discount Charge: This is the fee we charge you for the money you use. It is applied in a similar fashion as interest rate on an overdraft facility.
Dispute: If customer is not going to pay an invoice it will be classed as a dispute.
Export Debt: The amount of money owing to you from an overseas customer.
Factoring Charge: A charge made for the administration of your sales ledger, collections and the processing of invoices.
Funding Limit: This is your borrowing limit agreed at the outset of our agreement. This can be changed during the course of our relationship.
Funding Period: Upto 90 days from the date of invoice.
High Involvement: Please refer to concentration.
On Account Cash: Occasionally it is not possible to match payments received from your customers against a specific invoice. In this event the monies will be allocated to the sales ledger as “On Account Cash” until the invoice(s) and cash can be matched back.
Payments: Is the funding amount advanced to you.
Pre Payment: Also known as an advance. This is the percentage figure that is available the day following receipt of your invoices i.e. 80% of the invoice value will be advanced to you.
Reassignment: If a debt becomes uncollectable for whatever reason e.g. a debtor goes into liquidation, then the debt can be reassigned to you. This means that the debt belongs to you and not Bibby Financial Services.
Sales Ledger: A record of all monies due and received from your customers.
Schedules: A listing of all the invoices that are being sent in at any one time showing the customer name, code, amount and date etc.
Verification: Our credit controllers will regularly contact your customers on a random basis to ensure goods and services have been delivered and performed to your customer’s satisfaction. This process is known as verification.