Property maintenance and facilities-management firms sit in an awkward spot. You are not a construction contractor building from the ground up, but you carry many of the same cash pressures: engineers and operatives on the payroll, materials bought in for each job, vehicles and tools to keep on the road, and clients who pay on 30, 60 or 90-day terms. Whether you run reactive and planned maintenance, hard or soft FM, or a mixed services contract across a portfolio of buildings, the money goes out well before it comes back in.
How this differs from a construction firm
A builder funds a project; an FM firm funds a service. The work is continuous and spread across many small jobs and call-outs rather than a few large valuations, so the squeeze is steadier and harder to see coming. You complete the work, raise the invoice, and then wait — often through a client’s slow approval chain. We cover the heavier project rhythm separately in our note on funding for UK construction companies, but the day-to-day pinch for maintenance firms is the wait between finishing a job and being paid for it.
The completion-to-payment gap
This is the core of it. Your operatives have been paid, the parts have been bought, the job is signed off — and the cash is still weeks away. Across dozens of live jobs and several contracts at once, that earned-but-unpaid balance becomes a large part of your working capital. A facility lets you keep mobilising the next job rather than waiting on the last one to clear.
Retention and held-back sums
Larger FM and fit-out-adjacent contracts often carry retention, the slice a client holds back until works are signed off and sometimes for a period afterwards. That is money you have already earned, paid for in labour and materials, sitting in someone else’s account. It works much the same way as it does for contractors, and our note on how retention payments affect construction cash flow explains the mechanics and how funding bridges the release dates.
Materials, fleet and tools
Maintenance is materials-hungry in small, constant amounts: parts, plant, consumables and the occasional larger spec item for a planned works package. Buying ahead of a client payment is exactly the kind of timing gap our note on financing materials and stock purchases addresses. Vehicles and equipment are the other standing cost — a mobile workforce needs vans, and our guide to equipment and plant costs for incorporated firms sets out the principle of matching the borrowing to the asset rather than draining your wage cash.
Scaling onto a bigger contract
Winning a multi-building or portfolio contract is the moment cash runs thinnest. You recruit engineers, kit out vehicles and stock materials weeks before the first invoice is approved. That mobilisation phase is where a facility earns its keep.
Which product fits
- Credicorp Flex suits the rolling maintenance cycle: draw to cover a wage run, a parts order or a contract mobilisation, then repay as client payments land, and draw again next cycle
- Credicorp Slice provides a single, sized amount for a defined cost, such as a batch of vans or one large planned-works package
- The rate and term that apply are always the ones shown in your offer, never a figure quoted here
The basics
We lend to UK limited companies and LLPs only. We cannot lend to a sole trader or an individual running a maintenance round, and we take no personal guarantees from directors — the reasons are set out in why we lend to companies, not sole traders. This is business lending outside the FCA consumer-credit regime, so the Financial Ombudsman Service and FSCS protections do not apply. You can reach us through the General Support Enquiry form or the contact page before you commit.
See also: Can an accountancy practice borrow from Credicorp?, How do we fund a large new contract?, Funding a shop fit-out or refurbishment.