Home & trade services
Funding for residential electrical contractors
You’re quoting panel upgrades three weeks out because one van can only sit in one driveway at a time. 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 electrician, and when
A residential electrician gets paid at completion. The homeowner pays by card or check when the panel is live, and the month is built from a few big tickets, not a lot of small ones: a service upgrade, a panel swap, a round of EV chargers. You buy the materials and pull the permit before any of that money lands.
That timing matters more than the total. Your statements show large deposits landing on job days, with material and permit costs going out just before. That is a healthy pattern for this trade.
Two things change the picture. First, EV charger jobs where a rebate covers part of the ticket. Then part of the job arrives later, under the rebate program’s name, not your customer’s. That is normal. Just say which deposits those are before anyone has to ask, because the ticket amount and the deposit won’t match. Second, work for a general contractor on a draw schedule. That shows up as money owed to you, not money in hand, and it reads completely differently. A remittance doesn’t care that your money is sitting in somebody else’s account.
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 the draw money hasn’t landed.
The arithmetic, as an illustration
$10,400
a normal week in; the $1,550 weekly debit is about 15 cents of every dollar
$6,000
a draw-late week in; the same $1,550 debit is about 26 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
Nothing in the contract changed between those two weeks. The deposits did. So don’t ask “can I afford this in my best month?” Ask “can I afford this in the week the draw is late?” That week decides whether the money was a good idea.
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
Most funding pages list term loans, SBA loans, lines of credit and advances as if you were choosing from nothing. You are not.
Trade credit
The supply house
Trade credit from your supply house is the working-capital line most electricians already have, and it’s usually the least expensive money in the trade. Thirty days of panels, breakers, and wire on their money, for jobs you’ll close in days, is exactly the gap an upgrade 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.
Secured
Equipment finance for the van
The van itself holds its value, so it gets financed against itself, usually at a price no line of credit or advance can match. Put equipment financing on the form for that half. The racking, bins, and stock that go inside it are working capital, and that’s my half.
Paperwork
Who holds the licence, you or the master electrician?
Here’s a paperwork question worth settling before anyone asks. Whoever funds you needs to see that the business is licensed for the work it’s billing. When the licence sits with a master electrician who works for you instead of the company, that’s a mismatch on paper, and 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 licence number, the qualifier’s name, and one sentence on how they sit in the business in one place, ready before anyone asks. Same if you hold a state licence but each jurisdiction registers you separately. Bring it up yourself and it never becomes a problem.
Scope
Service and upgrades, not draws
One boundary for this page: it’s written for the electrician who gets paid at completion, because that’s the electrician a funding partner can read from bank statements. Work paid on a general contractor’s draw schedule is money owed on somebody else’s timetable, and the shape built for that is factoring, not a line or an advance. Factoring is an option you can ask for on the form.
If you do both, the service and upgrade side is the readable side. A business line of credit covers materials on work already sold, repaid when the job closes. A merchant cash advance fits the narrow case where the work is booked, not hoped for, and the daily debit clears in your thinnest week.
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 truck before spring.”
- 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
- $35,000
- Factor rate
- 1.30
- You remit in total
- $45,500
- Cost of the money
- $10,500
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.
Upfitting and stocking the second van
Racking, bins, a ladder rack, and the load centers, breakers, and wire that make it a working truck instead of a parked one. The van itself usually belongs on equipment finance; what goes inside it is working capital.
A journeyman before they’re billable
Wages start the week they start, and the schedule behind them fills over the following weeks. That gap is measured in payroll runs, not in jobs, and it’s the thing the money would actually be covering.
Panel and charger stock
The breaker sizes you actually pull and the charger models you install most, on the shelf. Stock turns a service call into an upgrade closed the same visit, instead of a quote the homeowner sits on for a month.
Permit and utility float
On a service upgrade you pull the permit and pay the fees, then wait on the utility to schedule the disconnect. Labour and material leave your account before anything about that job can close.
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 upgrade work because one van can’t cover it, and a new journeyman 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 schedule fills behind the hire. An advance is the expensive alternative, and it only makes sense if the work is already booked rather than hoped for. |
| You’ve sold upgrade jobs and need panels, breakers, and chargers on the shelf to close them. | An advance might fit, because the money buys material for work that already exists. It’s expensive, so the whole test sits on the word sold. Material bought for jobs you’re hoping to sell is the version of this that goes wrong. |
| You’re waiting on a general contractor to release a draw. | Probably neither. The draw is a receivable, and financing against receivables is factoring, which you can ask for on the form. A weekly debit running while a GC sits on your money is how a profitable job turns into a bad quarter. |
| Work is steady and you’d rather have room in place before something breaks. | A line of credit, arranged while the file looks its best. A line you’re not drawing on costs little beyond whatever the partner charges to keep it open, and the worst week to start the conversation is the week you need the money. |
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 electricians
Read this before you talk to anyone:
If most of my work is paid on a general contractor’s draw schedule, do a line of credit or an advance still fit?
Probably not, and on an electrical file it’s the single thing that changes the answer most. Work paid by a homeowner at completion becomes a deposit within days; work paid on a draw schedule becomes a deposit when somebody else decides. The same revenue reads differently depending on who released it.
My licence is held by a master electrician who works for me, not by me. Is that a problem?
It’s a normal arrangement, but it needs to be visible rather than discovered. Keep the licence number, the qualifier’s name, and how they sit in the business in one place. Raised early, it’s a non-issue.
A utility rebate covers part of some of my jobs. How does that read on my statements?
As a third-party deposit, which needs one sentence of explanation and nothing more. Part of the job arrives later and under a name that isn’t your customer’s. Keep the program paperwork with the job file and the question answers itself.
Should I hire a journeyman now, or keep subbing out the overflow?
Subcontracting costs more per job and nothing up front; hiring costs payroll before the schedule fills in behind it. That gap is what the money would actually be covering, so it’s worth being precise about how many weeks long it is. If you can’t put a number of weeks on it yet, the honest answer is to keep subbing until you can.
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 electrical 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
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