Springfield factor assists businesses

It was a recurring theme in Donna Mullane's work for the past eight years.

As part owner and operator of Professional Business Assis-tance Inc. with her husband Kevin, she assisted local business owners with their accounting and consulting needs.

And time after time, "We found that one of their most frustrating things was accounts receivable," she said. "It's a huge time consumption when you should be out doing the business that you make money at."

Now she has a solution.

Factoring

Mullane works for The CDS Group out of New York, which does factoring financing and managing accounts receivable. Mullane is the business development officer for the Midwest region.

"We basically function as your back office accounts re-ceivable people," Mullane said.

Ultimately, she said, factoring is a way to finance business needs other than with conventional funding.

Unlike a bank that lends money based on a company's ability to repay, she said, CDS advances money based upon the ability of debtors to pay what is owed.

"It's funding your accounts receivable," Mullane said. "You're borrowing money ... instead of waiting on your clients to pay it to you."

She said interest rates vary from client to client and also between different industries.

While factoring has been in America since the Mayflower landed the Pil-grims' voyage was funded by factors from England who were repaid in goods from the new land Mullane said retail factoring is fairly new to the Midwest.

Factoring has long been focused on the wholesale industry, an area where banks, too, have been involved, she said.

"Factoring as a whole has been used on the East Coast for a very long time," she said. "It's a tool that has not been in this market that long. Some banks are involved in factoring, but this retail market is a market that is truly unique. There are only a few companies in the country that do it."

Mullane said CDS, which has been in business 30 years and has more than $300 million in funded and managed capital, guarantees payment within two days of processing an invoice.

The whole process from applying to checking customer account information can be done online at www.myreceiv ables.com, she said.

Her job is to get a client to that point.

"My goal is to bring their product to the Midwest region because it is a new product and you can only reach so many people via the Internet," Mullane said. "You need that personal attention to start the relationship. After that, Web-based is great."

Clients

CDS clients range from small businesses to large franchisers, she said.

True Value is one of its larger clients. The company provides service for all of True Value's in-house and online accounts. Other common retail sectors are home centers, druggists and florists. "Those three are our big focus," she said, but "we cover anybody that has accounts receivable."

Mullane said that while start-ups and small businesses are always good prospects, "some of the more mature businesses are the ones that see the need the quickest when you've been in business and know what a fight it is to deal with ... receivables daily."