Funding by industry
Construction funding, judged on how you actually get paid
Most funding review is built around businesses that get paid when they sell. Contractors get paid weeks after the work is done, minus a slice held until the whole project closes. That single difference explains why strong contractors get thin offers — and what to put in the file so the review reads the business correctly.
Elora is not a lender, bank or broker. We coordinate: we prepare the file and introduce it to appropriate funding sources, who make every credit decision. Nothing here is an offer, a rate quote or a guarantee of approval.
The gap the funding is actually covering
A contractor funds the job before the job funds them: labour weekly, materials on delivery, payment on terms. The request is almost never about profitability — it is about the distance between spending and collecting. Making that explicit in the file changes what the reviewer is deciding.
- Who pays you matters more than how much. A general contractor, a developer and a municipality pay on very different rhythms. A file backed by public-body work reads differently from one backed by a single private developer.
- Concentration is a risk factor. If one client is seventy per cent of revenue, that is the first thing an underwriter will flag — and it is better addressed in the file than discovered.
- Retainage is not receivable yet. Five to ten per cent withheld until project close means an invoice is rarely worth face value in the near term. Files sized as though it were tend to run short.
- Change orders unsettle a clean picture. Work performed but not yet formally approved sits in an awkward place: real cost, uncertain invoice. Flagging it beats leaving it to be found.
The documents that actually move a contractor file
A contractor file needs two things a retail file does not: evidence of what is owed, and evidence of what is committed. These are what resolve it.
| Document | Why it is asked for |
|---|---|
| Business bank statements — last 4 months | Shows the real cash rhythm: the payroll runs, the material purchases, and the lumpy incoming payments that follow weeks later. |
| Accounts receivable ageing | The document most contractors do not send and most reviewers want first. It shows who owes what, and for how long — which is the entire question. |
| Signed contracts or purchase orders for work in progress | Turns "we have work lined up" into something a reviewer can size against. Committed work is evidence; a verbal pipeline is not. |
| Equipment schedule, with what is owned and what is financed | Determines whether an asset-backed structure is available at all, and prevents an already-pledged machine from being offered twice. |
If you hold a Florida contractor licence, include the number and the classification. It is quick to verify, it confirms the scope of work you can legally perform, and its absence raises a question that takes days to answer by email.
Which structures tend to fit — and which rarely do
Repayment has to survive a month with two payrolls and no collections. That is the test any structure has to pass for a contractor.
| Structure | How it behaves |
|---|---|
| Receivables-backed funding | Advances against approved invoices, so it tracks the actual gap rather than a generic revenue estimate. Requires clean documentation of what has been billed and accepted. |
| Equipment financing | The machine secures the transaction, so the review leans on the asset. Well matched to expansion; a poor match for covering payroll on a project already under way. |
| Business line of credit | The closest fit to how the problem actually behaves: draw when you mobilise, repay when the draw clears. Hardest to qualify for, and expects organised books. |
| Daily-remittance advance | Fast, but the mismatch is real: a fixed daily debit against income that arrives every six weeks. Sometimes the only option available — worth entering with the timing understood. |
We do not publish rates, amounts or terms. Those are set by the funding source for your specific file, and any figure quoted before underwriting would be a guess. How these structures differ, in plain English →
Why contractor files stall
In our experience preparing files, most delays are not credit decisions. They are gaps that could have been closed before submission.
- No receivables ageing. The most common gap. Without it, the reviewer cannot tell a sixty-day invoice from a six-month one.
- Contracts described but not attached. Committed work only counts as committed if it is in the file.
- Personal and business banking mixed. Very common in owner-operated trades, and it makes the cash rhythm unreadable.
- An existing lien or UCC filing is not mentioned. It will be found. Raising it first keeps the file with sources that can work around it.
What happens if you start a review
You answer a short intake, upload documents through a secure portal, and a person — not an automated score — reads the file and tells you what is strong, what is missing and which kinds of funding source are a realistic fit. No upfront fees, and nothing at this stage affects your credit. If we cannot help, we say so.