Home & trade services
Funding for appliance repair businesses
You get paid when the fridge is cold again, which means parts money goes out before the invoice gets paid, and the warranty jobs pay what the contract says, not what the hour cost. I’m Addy, and I help shops like yours think through the money side before you sign anything.
See my options
Start here
How a funding partner reads your business
Much of what a partner reads is in your bank statements, and it comes down to three questions. Everything below is me walking you through your own answers, so nothing in your statements surprises you later.
When does the money come in?
Job days, invoice terms, or a slow drip all month. The pattern matters more than the total.
How steady is it?
One great month doesn’t tell anyone what a normal month looks like.
What was each deposit for?
If a reader can’t tell, they assume the worst. A sentence of explanation fixes it.
The trade
Who pays an appliance repair shop, and when
You get paid at the door when the machine runs again. Card or check, same visit, and the ticket is mostly labour with a parts line that you already paid for days ago. That’s the healthy core of the trade: fast cash conversion, deposits every day, a file anyone can read.
Two things complicate the picture. First, parts. The control board or compressor you ordered Tuesday arrives Thursday and gets billed Friday, so parts money is always out ahead of the revenue it becomes. Second, warranty and contract work. A manufacturer or home-warranty company pays on its schedule at its rate, not yours, and those deposits land under the contract company’s name weeks after the visit. Same tech, same van, two very different kinds of revenue.
Say which is which before anyone asks. A statement mixing same-day door payments with contract deposits that land weeks later reads as erratic until somebody explains that it’s two revenue streams, not one confused one.
The risk
Let’s do the math together
Say you’re weighing a $40,000 advance. Here’s what the payments feel like in a normal week, and in a week where the contract jobs haven’t paid yet.
The arithmetic, as an illustration
$12,000
a normal week in; the $1,550 weekly debit is about 13 cents of every dollar
$7,000
a contract-late week in; the same $1,550 debit is about 22 cents of every dollar
$52,000
remitted on a $40,000 advance at a 1.30 factor rate, about $310 every working day over eight months
The contract work doesn’t change what the debit costs. It changes when the money to cover it arrives. If the door-paid retail side alone can’t carry the debit in a week the contracts are late, the advance is riding on somebody else’s payment schedule, and that schedule was never yours to control.
An illustration, not a quote: nobody has offered anyone these terms. Real terms come from a funding partner.
Before you borrow
The cheaper money you may already have
Before the funding menu: the money already sitting inside your business and your supply chain.
Trade credit
The parts distributor’s terms
Boards, compressors, and sealed-system parts on the distributor’s terms are the cheapest working capital in this trade. Parts money is always out ahead of the invoice, so 30 days of it on their money instead of yours is exactly the gap the work creates. Ask for terms before you ask anyone for money.
Inside your software
The offer inside your dispatch software
If you run dispatch software, there may be a capital offer waiting inside it, underwritten on the payment history running through it and repaid out of your payouts. Same products this site explains, priced the same way. Read any offer with the four questions from the advance guide in hand.
Deposits
The diagnostic fee collected up front
A diagnostic fee taken when the visit is booked covers the trip and commits the customer before a part is ever ordered. It’s the customer’s money, not a lender’s, and it costs you nothing.
Paperwork
Who’s certified for sealed-system work?
Here’s a paperwork question worth settling before anyone asks. Sealed-system work means servicing equipment that holds refrigerant, and federal rules require EPA Section 608 certification for anyone who does it. Whoever funds you wants to see that the business is credentialed for the work it’s billing, and when the certificate lives in somebody’s van instead of the office, a request can stall while someone tracks down a document nobody asked for up front.
It’s a normal arrangement. It just needs to be visible rather than discovered. Keep the certification, who holds it, and how they sit in the business in one place, ready before anyone asks. Bring it up yourself and it never becomes a problem.
Scope
Retail at the door, contracts on their schedule
One boundary for this page: it’s written for the shop whose core is retail repair paid at the door, because that’s the shop a funding partner can read from bank statements. Contract and warranty work paid on a manufacturer’s or warranty company’s schedule is receivables on somebody else’s timetable, and financing against receivables is factoring, which you can ask for on the form.
For the retail shop: a merchant cash advance can fit the narrow case where the money buys parts for jobs already booked, and the door-paid side can carry the debit alone. A business line of credit, if it is open to you, can fit the parts float between ordering and billing. Which one fits is my read, not an offer.
How it works
You talk. I work. You choose.
- 1You say
Tell me about the business.
What you do, what you bring in, what you need and when. One short form, about two minutes.
“I need $40,000 for a second van and parts stock.”
- 2I do
I take it to funding partners.
I get it in front of partners who work with businesses like yours. I do not underwrite, price or decide.
Your request, told once, to people who can fund it.
- 3You decide
You pick, or you walk away.
Interested partners contact you with their terms, if an offer comes. Compare, pick one, or walk away.
“This one gives me the runway without crushing cash flow.”
The arithmetic
How much are you considering?
Play with the numbers
Pick a shape of money, drag the sliders, and watch the math change.
An advance is priced by a factor rate, not interest. Put in the amount, and the rate if somebody has quoted you one.
The arithmetic
- Advance
- $20,000
- Factor rate
- 1.30
- You remit in total
- $26,000
- Cost of the money
- $6,000
An illustration, not a quote: nobody has offered you these terms. Real terms come from a funding partner and depend on your cash flow, and fees can sit on top of the factor rate.
See my optionsEach one has its own page, with a worked example: all six calculators.
What the money buys
What owners in this trade actually spend it on.
A second van, stocked
Racking, the boards and compressors you replace most, and the sealed-system gear. A second van turns a two-day backlog into same-week bookings, which is revenue you’re currently turning away.
Parts on the shelf
The control boards, igniters, pumps, and compressors you order every week, bought ahead instead of per job. Shelf stock turns a two-visit job into a one-visit close, and the diagnostic into a repair the same day.
A second tech before they’re billable
Wages start the week they start, and the route behind them fills over the following weeks. That gap is measured in payroll runs, and it’s what the money would actually be covering.
The diagnostic you’re not charging
If you’re running free diagnostics to win the job, the trip cost is coming out of margin. Money spent tightening that up, better dispatching, denser routes, pays back faster than money spent on anything else.
Which one fits
Which financing fits your situation?
I don’t recommend a product without seeing your numbers. Below is how owners in this trade usually think the options through: possibilities to explore, not an offer or a recommendation. Where none of them is the right move, the table says so.
| Your situation | What might be worth exploring, and why |
|---|---|
| You’re turning away jobs because one van can’t cover the route, and a second tech is payroll before they’re revenue. | Owners in this spot often look at a business line of credit first: the gap has a beginning and an end, and you repay as the route fills behind the hire. An advance only fits if the door-paid side alone can carry the debit in a contract-late week. |
| Parts money is always out ahead of the invoice and the float is getting bigger as you grow. | A line of credit is the natural shape for a float you can put a rhythm to. An advance prices a repeating short gap as though it were permanent money. |
| You’re waiting on a warranty company to pay for last month’s contract jobs. | Probably neither. Those are receivables on somebody else’s schedule, and financing against receivables is factoring, which you can ask for on the form. A weekly debit running while a contract company sits on your money is how a profitable month turns into a bad quarter. |
| The van, the recovery machine, or the shop’s major tools need replacing. | Equipment financing secures against the asset and matches the term to how long it earns, usually far cheaper than a line or an advance. Ask for equipment financing on the form. |
Which shape fits is my read, not an offer. Partners decide what they will do with a request, and on what terms.
Questions
Asked by appliance repair owners
Read this before you talk to anyone:
My revenue mixes same-day door payments with contract jobs paid weeks later. How does that read?
As two revenue streams, once you say so. A statement mixing daily door deposits with contract deposits weeks behind them reads as erratic until somebody explains it’s retail and contract side by side. Say which is which before anyone has to ask.
Should I keep doing warranty and contract work, or go retail-only?
Contract work fills the schedule and pays less per hour on someone else’s timetable; retail pays at the door at your rate. The funding question is simpler than the business question: the debit has to clear on the retail side alone, because the contract schedule was never yours to control.
Parts always go out before the invoice gets paid. Is that a problem for funding?
It’s the normal shape of the trade, and it’s exactly what a line of credit is for. What changes the read is the size of the float relative to the revenue behind it, so know the number: how many dollars of parts are out right now that haven’t been billed yet.
I’m running free diagnostics to win jobs. Does that matter?
It matters to the margin the debit comes out of. The trip cost is real whether you charge for it or not, and a funding partner reading thin margins will price that in. A diagnostic fee collected up front is also the cheapest money in the trade.
Will you pull my credit?
No. There is no credit pull from me; the form on this page is information, not an application. A funding partner does its own underwriting and may pull credit at that point, and it will tell you when it does.
Get funding options
Tell me about your appliance repair business.
About two minutes, and no credit pull from me. Tell me what you do, what you bring in and what the money is for, and I take your request to funding partners. You can strengthen it with a bank connection afterward.
Free to you. Funding partners pay Addy for the introduction.
Addy is not a lender, and does not underwrite, price or decide who gets funded.
Page updated
Home & trade services
Not quite your trade?
Home & trade services
Plumbing
Service and drain work is paid at the door. What a truck-mounted plumber's funding file looks like and what the money is usually for.
Home & trade services
Electrical
Panel upgrades, EV chargers, service calls. What funding buys in a service electrical shop, and why who pays you matters more than what you install.
Home & trade services
HVAC
Seasonal, high-ticket, and heavily marketed to. What a funding partner sees in an HVAC file, and why the month you take an advance matters as much as the rate.