Capital that funds payroll first.

How do cleaning companies cover payroll while waiting on clients?

Commercial cleaners factor their invoices. You send the invoice to the property manager, sell it to a factor, and get most of the money within a day or two instead of waiting out net 30 or net 45. The factor collects later. Payroll runs every two weeks no matter what, so closing that gap is the whole game. Residential cleaners rarely need factoring, because customers pay at the door or on the card. They use a line of credit instead, drawn in the slow weeks and repaid in the busy ones.

What we see funded

• Payroll bridges for commercial cleaners whose corporate clients pay net 30 or net 45.
• Vehicle financing for vans, trucks, and specialty vehicles (e.g. truck-mounted carpet cleaning units).
• Equipment. Floor scrubbers, carpet extractors, pressure washers, fogging equipment, specialty restoration gear.
• AR factoring for janitorial companies serving large commercial accounts. The AR is high-quality (corporate creditworthiness) but the timing is brutal.
• Working capital for contract starts. Winning a new property-management account often means staffing up before the first invoice cycle pays.
• Acquisition — buying out a competitor or a retiring owner’s book of business.

What a cleaning deal usually looks like

A janitorial company bills $1.1M a year across 22 commercial accounts. Payroll is about $32K every two weeks. The property managers pay in 41 days on average. We set up a factoring line advancing 88% of each invoice. On $92K of monthly billing, roughly $81K lands within two days of invoicing, which covers payroll twice over. Setup takes about a week, most of it verifying the client list.

A new contract start looks different. Winning a five-building account means hiring nine cleaners, buying equipment, and running payroll for six weeks before the first check clears. That is usually a $60K to $100K term loan over 18 to 24 months, or a short RBF if the contract starts in ten days and there is no time for a full underwrite. A truck-mounted carpet extraction unit at $45K is straight equipment financing over 60 months.

What lenders look at

The first question is always the mix.

Commercial work is recurring and easy to forecast. The same buildings, the same monthly amount. But it pays slowly, so the cash gap is real.

Residential work pays almost immediately. The tradeoff is that volume jumps around week to week and clients cancel without notice.

Lenders want the split in writing, because it decides which product fits. Then they check concentration. If one property-management group is 40% of your revenue, losing that contract would cut your business nearly in half, and lenders price that in. Under 25% from any single client is comfortable.

They also look at whether your contracts are month-to-month or term. A signed two-year contract is worth far more in underwriting than a handshake, because it survives a change in building management. That same concentration test shows up in wholesale distribution, where one big buyer can carry — or sink — the whole file.

What we recommend

Mostly commercial? Factor the receivables. It is the cleanest fix for a payroll problem caused by slow-paying clients. Mostly residential? A short working-capital line or RBF. Buying vans or floor equipment? Term loan or equipment financing, every time — do not use expensive short-term money for a five-year asset.