Can I finance a single invoice?
Answer
Yes, a business can finance a single invoice through providers offering selective invoice finance or on-demand invoice finance. These products fund one invoice at a time with no obligation to assign the rest of the ledger, no minimum monthly volume, and no commitment to fund the next invoice. The single invoice is funded as a discrete transaction with its own advance, fee, and settlement. Whole-of-ledger factoring providers do not typically offer this; they require the entire receivables ledger to be assigned under a single contract.
Detail
The market splits roughly into two camps. Whole-of-ledger providers (which include most traditional invoice factoring companies) underwrite the receivables ledger as a single pool and price the facility around expected monthly volume; their commercial model breaks if a business only funds the occasional invoice. Selective and on-demand providers underwrite each invoice individually and structure pricing as a flat fee per invoice funded, with no facility-level minimums.
In the ANZ market, the dominant whole-of-ledger players (including the wholesale invoice finance arms of the major banks and ScotPac's primary facility) do not fund single invoices on a standalone basis. The selective alternatives include FundTap (on-demand, undisclosed), Marmalade (AU, invoice-by-invoice), and ScotPac's separately-branded selective product. UK-based providers occasionally fund cross-border ANZ invoices, but most ANZ businesses use a local provider.
For a single-invoice transaction, the practical considerations are: minimum invoice value (some providers have a floor below which the per-invoice fee makes the transaction uneconomic for the business; FundTap has no minimum), debtor profile (the end debtor must pass the funder's credit check, which is the binding eligibility test rather than the originating business's credit profile), invoice age (most providers will not fund invoices already overdue or close to overdue; FundTap will not fund invoices more than 60 days past due date), and turnaround time (single-invoice products typically fund within hours of approval, against multi-day batch processing on traditional facilities).
Single-invoice funding is most commonly used by businesses with one large customer payment timing-mismatched against a non-deferrable obligation, such as a payroll run or a tax instalment. It is also used in construction by sub-contractors funding a single progress claim while waiting on retention. The structural feature that makes it possible is that the funder underwrites the receivable, not the business's general credit; if the invoice is valid and the debtor is creditworthy, the rest of the business's ledger is irrelevant to the decision.
Sources and standards
- /standards/selective-invoice-funding
- /standards/on-demand-invoice-finance
- /standards/connect-select-receive
- /standards/invoice-finance
- /standards/funding-readiness
Related questions
- How does selective invoice finance work?
- What is the difference between invoice financing and factoring?
- Who offers selective invoice finance in NZ?
- How much does invoice finance cost?
- Before you sign a whole-of-ledger factoring contract
Version
v1.0 · Last reviewed 2026-05-27 · Owner: Molly McLeod · Authored: Matt Peacey