Lease Group makes equipment finance run like clockwork for over 850 supplier Partners from the telecoms, IT, AV, Energy, Healthcare and Hospitality sectors. As an extension on both your sales and finance departments, we’ll help you to close more deals, speed up your payment terms, eliminate all risk and ultimately, grow your business.
But first, knowledge is power and we’ve created a series of emails to help you on your way to becoming a leasing expert.
From the outset, we knew that the only way to offer a scalable Partner proposition was by putting you in complete control of the process, and that’s where the Lease Portal comes in.
Designed for speed and simplicity, our white-labelled Portal enables you to generate lease quotes, submit orders, get online credit decisions and track deals with real-time reporting.
The Lease Portal – Key Features
There are number of features used on a day-to-day basis. Here’s a list of popular menu items to get you started:
Quick Quote – This simple quoting feature allows you to convert upfront invoices into monthly lease repayments, or vice versa. It’s at the heart of our service and is pre-loaded with your own rates. You can calculate monthly repayments on terms from 12 – 60 months. You can even calculate costs per user and also tax relief savings!
Quick Quote has a PDF Quote version, so you can generate branded PDF Quotes to send to your customer. When you generate a Quote, your rate is locked in for 120 days, so don’t worry if your deal is taking longer than expected to close.
Submit Application – Once your customer wishes to proceed with the order, simply use our Submit Application feature to send your deal for online credit approval. In as little as 5 seconds, your customer will be credit vetted and an online decision will be reached. Your order will then be processed by our Support Team and the lease contract will be issued for signing (wet sign and electronic signatures supported).
Deal Flow – Once your order has been approved and processed, use the Deal Flow to track the order in real-time, there are just 4 stages from Approval to Payout. All of your live orders are displayed in the Deal Flow so you’ll know exactly where each order sits in the process.
Answers – All of our Partner FAQs are displayed in our Answers section. Use this feature to find answers relating to orders, credit criteria or the end of term process.
Rewards – Each and every order earns the Salesperson a reward. Our Rewards section displays the latest rewards on offer, brands where rewards can be claimed and also a log of all Rewards claimed and issued. Rewards are processed every Friday.
Admin – The Admin section provides real-time and historical reporting of all orders processed. Simply search by customer to find order related information and use our Renewal Zone to identify leases approaching end-of-life.
The Lease Portal puts quoting leases at your finger tips, with quotes being raised in a matter of seconds. Partners who lead with a lease quote experience far greater traction versus those who lead with the upfront invoice. Understanding how best to present your lease quote puts you on path to delivering your solutions ‘as-a-service’ and can boost your conversion rate by over 50%.
Tips For Raising Your First Lease Quote
The Lease Portal provides simplistic ways to generate a quote and only requires you to input the key financials of your sale.
The key thing to remember: keep it simple.
Leasing is simply a payment method for acquiring products and services, instead of paying upfront, your customer can spread the cost over a term that matches their budget and the lifespan of the solution offered.
Quick Quote – This simple quoting feature allows you to convert upfront invoices into monthly lease repayments, or vice versa. Pre-loaded with your own rates, you can calculate monthly repayments on terms from 12 – 60 months. All you have to do is input the total sale (ex. VAT) and select a payment period – the monthly repayment will display in the field below.
Quick Quote has a PDF Quote version, so you can generate branded PDF Quotes to send to your customer. When you generate a Quote, your rate is locked in for 120 days, so don’t worry if your deal is taking longer than expected to close.
Quick Quote provides an option to reverse calculate the figures, so instead of converting an invoice value into a monthly repayment, you can calculate an invoice value from a monthly figure. This is particularly useful where your customer understands their monthly budget – but you need to calculate what value of equipment this generates in return.
What to Include in your Financials
You should input the total value of the equipment and software being provided excluding VAT. It’s important to note that we can also support up to 30% of your professional service costs, for example: installation and delivery.
Rather than billing these elements separately, it’s good practice to include these in your total sale so your customer can benefit by breaking these costs into a monthly payment too.
How to Handle End of Term Queries
Your customer will possibly associate leasing with a return of equipment at the end of the term – which is common in the automotive sector. It’s important to note that whilst the Hire Agreement does state the return of products, Lease Group provides an option to keep the equipment at the end of the lease.
Provided the lease is fully paid down, we will make title of the equipment available for a one-time, nominal payment. By default, we will present the title option to you (the original supplier), allowing you to decide whether or not the customer should return the equipment to you. If you decide that you do not wish to take title – we will present the option to your customer directly.
Title fees are calculated on the Quick Quote feature – so you know in advance what this cost will be. Please note, the fee will never be more than £150 + VAT, and this passes title for ALL of the equipment specified on the lease.
Should I Mention the Tax Savings?
Tax relief is a major benefit of leasing. Rather than paying the full invoice and VAT upfront using the customer’s CAPEX budget, leasing converts the expenditure into OPEX, making it 100% tax deductible. As an example, rather than paying £10,000 + VAT on day one, if your customer chooses to lease the equipment, they will actually pay £9,189.29 + VAT (24 month lease and 19% corporation tax assumed).
Coupled with the cash-flow friendly nature of leasing, this is an attractive offering and explains why over 80% of the FTSE 500 favour leasing over paying for equipment outright.
Our Quick Quote feature calculates tax savings and illustrates these for your customer. It’s always good to remind your customer that each payment is 100% tax deductible, but again, keep it simple. If your customer wishes to learn more about tax relief, refer them to our post on the link below, so as to keep you out of unnecessary tax discussions which can be lengthy, particularly if the customer is unsure of the mechanics.
When you submit your next lease application you’ll experience an online credit decision in as little as 5 seconds. But it pays to understand what lenders are looking for so your customer expectations can be managed prior to submitting your order. Here we’ll run through the key points for getting your next customer credit approved.
What Credit Scoring are Lenders Ideally Looking For?
Customers should typically have 3 years accounts filed in order to pass credit approval. Our panel of lenders are looking for the customer to show a balance sheet value (net worth) of at least 3 times the value of the lease being applied for. If you work to this criteria, you should find your acceptance rate is in the high 90%.
Lenders can look at customers with less time trading, although these approvals are usually formed off the back of a Director’s Guarantee (DG). Risk-based pricing may also be applied, thus increasing the rental your customer pays.
If your customer has less than 3 years filed accounts but the financials look supportive of the lend, this may be considered also. Newer companies that are formed within a Group structure have a higher chance of passing credit, particularly where the ultimate parent company is established and trading well.
Over and above this, if your customer shows accounts that are consistently declining in performance, this may also trigger requests for a Director’s Guarantee and risk-based pricing.
A company showing outstanding CCJ’s (County Court Judgements) or adverse information on any of the Listed Directors will likely return an unfavourable response, it should be noted.
What Company Types Should I Target for Leasing?
Leasing and finance should be offered to companies that are formed as follows:
Please be aware that credit decisions performed by our online system do not negatively impact your customer’s credit score.
It can at first seem like a daunting task to integrate Leasing and finance into your existing sales and accounting processes, but the reality is, it only takes 4 steps to get from credit approval through to invoice payment. Here we’ll guide you through the stages of your next lease order.
Step 1.
Once your customer has agreed to the products and pricing quoted, the first step is to submit your order for Credit Approval via the Lease Portal.
Simply complete the Submit Application form by inputting the details of your customer and order. Once completed, your order will be automatically Credit Approved online in as little as 5 seconds.
Step 2.
Shortly after receiving your Credit Approval, the lease documentation will be issued to your customer for signing. We offer both wet-sign and digital signing options, the latter being the quickest and easiest method of getting the lease contract issued and signed by your customer.
Step 3.
Once the lease documentation has been signed, you will receive an Invoice Instruction which specifies the information our lenders need to see on your invoice. This notification also instructs you to ship and install the equipment listed on your sale.
Step 4.
Once all equipment and services have been delivered and installed, your invoice should be sent to support @ leasegroup.co.uk. Following our final checks, your invoice will be passed for payment and you will receive the funds within 24 – 48 hours.
Tracking Multiple Orders – That’s Easy Too
As you scale up your leasing provision, you’ll want to be able to track all of your orders through the stages outlined above. Thankfully, we’ve made that easy. The Deal Flow displays all of your lease applications in progress, allowing you to track each order from Approval through to Payout, in real-time. It’s good practice to introduce your Finance Team to this section of the portal as it enables invoice instructions to be self-generated and helps to monitor the pipeline of payments due.
Upon invoice payment, you will receive a Payout Notification via email. All completed applications can then be found in your portal Admin section for future reference.
And there you have it, lease applications approved and paid in just 4 steps. A more detailed version of the order process flow can be downloaded from the Resources section, along with a customer-facing version which you can share with prospective customers to manage their expectations.
Leasing isn’t just for customers with cash-flow challenges, in fact, it’s favoured by over 80% of the FTSE 500 because of the benefits on offer. Check below for a digest of why businesses prefer leasing versus paying for equipment outright.
Firstly, What is Leasing?
Leasing is quite simply the process of acquiring equipment via third party finance and paying for it in manageable monthly amounts over a pre agreed term. It’s like a loan, only the loan is secured by the assets that have been acquired, which allows for a lower rate of interest.
By paying for the equipment monthly your customers will be preserving their hard earned working capital and not tying money up in ever depreciating assets. Most importantly, Leasing allows your customers to invest their money in more profitable activities which enable your business to grow.
The Key Benefits of Leasing
1. Protect Cash-Flow
Businesses get access to the equipment and technologies they need today, without affecting the company’s cash reserves.
2. Increase Profitability
Businesses can conserve their working capital and put it to use in other more profitable ways, such as investing in smarter operational software or increasing stock orders to enable further discounts.
3. Tax Allowable
Leasing qualifies as an operating expense to the business, meaning each is payment is 100% tax deductible. For the average company, that equates to a cost reduction of 19%. You can learn more about how tax relief is accounted for on this link here.
4. Afford the Best Quality
With a low monthly repayment, businesses are better positioned to afford the latest technology available. There’s no need to cut corners because an upfront budget doesn’t allow for a higher spec or a newer solution.
5. One, Simple Direct Debit
One rental can include all equipment, software and ancillary costs i.e. consultancy, installation, training and delivery. This means your customer doesn’t need to eat into their capital budget to pay for the services you provide. One direct debit, the entire solution spread over the term of the lease.
6. Payments are Fixed for the Term
Lease repayments are fixed for the duration of your lease, they do not fluctuate with inflation or base rate increases, making budgeting easy.
7. Flexible End of Term
At the end of the lease contract, customers are free to keep, upgrade or return the equipment as they please. There’s no hard and fast rule for returning the equipment and the cost of taking title can be for a nominal one-off fee or a continuation of reduced monthly payments, as agreed between you and the customer.
That’s the key benefits of leasing outlined. If you wish to download a customer-friendly guide to leasing, please head to the Resources section on the Lease Portal for a copy.
Leading with leasing can transform your close rate, as experienced by over 850 Lease Group Partners. The benefits of leasing are not limited to the customer, suppliers experience everything from faster invoice payment right through to the removal of repayment liability. Read on to find out how leasing can help to grow your supplier business.
The Partner Benefits of Leasing
1. Protect Your Cash-Flow
No need to spend weeks or months chasing down invoice payment from your customer, we pay you on the same day of invoice receipt.
2. Convert More Customers
Close more sales by offering a budgetable monthly repayment so customers can preserve capital and put their hard earned cash to more profitable uses.
3. Increase Order Value
With a fixed and budgetable monthly repayment, customers are more inclined to opt for better features and include the additional services you have to offer.
4. Shift the Liability
Once you have been paid your invoice, the repayment liability sits with Lease Group. There’s no need to worry or take on the risk.
5. Increase Profitability
Quoting upfront figures results in negotiation and discounting. By spreading the cost of the sale you should be retaining if not increasing margins.
6. Take Control of the Re-Sign
Take title of the equipment at the end of the lease and put yourself in a strong position to negotiate the re-sign and generate revenue from trade-ins.
See the solution in action over a 30 minute Zoom.
Login to the Lease Portal to get started on your leasing journey.
Contact one of the team for an informal chat about your needs.