eLease Equipment Leasing

Why are so many businesses installing surveillance systems in their offices? The main reason is TO SAVE MONEY. Companies that invest in surveillance equipment are likely to save money in a number of ways:
Insurance (workers comp) - Every year American businesses pay out millions if not billions of dollars to their employees for workers compensation for accidents that aren’t work related. Employment law in the United States heavily favors the employee and for good reason. But without a way to prove your employee wasn’t hurt on the job, businesses are extremely vulnerable to abuses of the system. By installing surveillance cameras companies can monitor their stores, production lines or any work place and have photographic evidence of specific injuries or accidents. Additionally, by seeing accidents first hand, business owners can take preventative measures to minimize future injuries.

Theft - All businesses have problems with theft from grocery stores to banks. By installing surveillance cameras not only can you abate theft from outsiders, but you can curb internal theft.

Productivity - Wonder what your employees are doing all day? With surveillance cameras you can track productivity of your workers and work on improving the efficiency of your business.

The other reason companies get a surveillance system for their business is to have PEACE OF MIND.

Internet Viewable - Surveillance systems today allow the business owner to
view their business operations from another location. The owner could be on a business trip in China and still keep an eye on his business.

Multiple Locations - Some business owners have more than one location and can only be present at one location at a time. With security cameras, owners can monitor locations simultaneously.

No how do business owners pay for their new surveillance system?

There are many different ways to pay for equipment for your business. The first and most obvious is paying cash. Not all business owners have the budget to pay cash for a surveillance system. This brings us to financing:

Financing your security system is a great way to acquire your equipment without having to seriously impact your cash flow. Traditional loans with banks can be good when considering an interest rate. You will typically have to put down anywhere from 10%– 20%. Along with the hefty down payment, banks place a blanket lien on all company assets.

What if a business owner could get that brand new surveillance system to save money in the long run and for peace of mind at the same time not giving up interest in assets or having to put down a bunch of money? Equipment leasing is the solution. Equipment leasing is a way to finance your surveillance system 100% only having to put down the first and last payment upfront. The leasing company only holds a lien on the particular equipment you are acquiring not all assets of the company.

The top 5 reasons to lease the new surveillance system:

1. Cash Flow - Making monthly payments are much easier than coming out of pocket thousands of dollars. Let the equipment pay for itself instead of waiting years before you break-even.
2. Low Down Payment (100% financing) - Paying your first and last payment upfront is much easier than having to come out of pocket 10% or 20% for a traditional loan from a bank.
3. Service contracts for the surveillance system can be bundled into a lease so you have one low monthly payment.
4. Upgrading - Adding equipment to your lease agreement is extremely easy. All it takes is a one-page contract added to the original agreement.
5. Leasing allows “Up Selling” - Having a leasing company pay for equipment allows customers to get EVERYTHING that they need without having to take certain items out because they can not afford them. Adding additional equipment to the lease will not change the monthly payment significantly allowing it to stay within customers’ budget.

A small freight forwarding company in South Florida needed a new surveillance system that cost $65,000 for their facility.  Not only were able to structure a 60-month term to fit their budget we fund their vendor 50%, up front, to get started on the installation. Just another example of how leasing can not only make your business grow but also run more efficiently.

The vendor and customer were thrilled but not as happy as Obama who locked up the delegates for the nomination of the Democratic Party.  eLease Equipment Leasing is a non-partisan company and are proud to say the Democratic State Committee of Connecticut is one of our customers.  Leasing and equipment finance is good for America and eLease is good for American business.

November is coming around the corner, by then we will know who our new President will be, our new customer will using their new equipment to grow and hopefully their won’t be $4.00 gas at the pump.  The customer also said he would help the voters in South Florida with the voting machines!  Just Kidding.  What a great country!   Congrats Mr. Obama.

Tax time is a great reminder of why we lease equipment for our customers. Depending on how you setup your leases you can write off your payment as an expense for your business.  Have questions about the different types of leases out there? Give us a call or check out this basic overview Lease Types.

The idea is to have your company running like a fine tuned machine. You are only spending money on what is making you money. Also it is scalable, so the more equipment you have the more money you make. Equipment leasing makes it much easier to plan and clearly see equipment is making money for your company.

With large capital investments it is hard to track how profitable those investments are for your business. But when you lease, you can match the money payments to the monthly profits.

Taxes can be a stressful time for companies. It is one of the only time small companies get a chance to look at their year in review and plan for follow years. Take advantage of the perspective and let 2008 be a high growth year from your company.

Sometimes the largest personal asset an entrepreneur has does not sit on the company balance sheet which is personal credit. Personal credit is usually reviewed first at the Bank they choose to open their business account and it continues from there with the land lord for the business wanting a signed credit application with your SSN.

Your business depends on your personal credit. It is your ability to gain credit for your business which is why it must be reviewed and protected. As a lender our banks review my personal credit on an annual basis which means I need to make sure my credit is protected. When I did my annual review of my credit I saw an account I don’t remember signing up for which was not being used but I had no recollection of applying for this account. I decided at that point to partner with a company, Lifelock, to protect my credit.

Lifelock www.lifelock.com provides a million of insurance for identity theft. I look at it like insurance on the business. How could I not protect my biggest personal asset for my credit. What if my identity was stolen? What would happen to my credit and more importantly what would happen to our relationships with our banks? The scenario almost made me sick to my stomach. I feel much better that I don’t have to worry about that for $10.00 per month!

Here is their info:

About LifeLock

LifeLock is the industry leader in the rapidly growing field of Identity Theft Protection. We are based in Tempe, Arizona. Our company is led by experienced and successful entrepreneurs and industry experts. We are backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the leading venture capital firms in the world. We serve tens of thousands of consumers in every state of the union, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Take a moment to browse and learn about the team that will work for you.

Thank goodness for mothers everywhere.  There is never a day that I don’t use the wisdom passed on from my parents.  My mother always told me to respect my elders.  In our business we seldom get to finance equipment that can truly lift the human spirit.  We had such an opportunity when a repeat customer who we financed software for last year.    The customer called us and asked if we could finance 8 digital pianos for their assisted living facility.  Most facilities have pianos but these pianos have a digital CD Player that plays requests.

It was the first such request we have ever received.  I have financed all kinds of different equipment including: zambonis and a fence for a tiger refuge in Texas.  When our customers have a need for equipment for their business it is our duty to do everything we can to get them their equipment.  We financed the pianos for the customer and it was music to their ears.  They were surprised and elated eLease were able to lease the peculiar equipment they needed.

When I got in the car that evening to go home I called my mother who worked in the hospice industry for the state of New Jersey as a medical investigator and told her about the customer.  She expressed to me how important music is for people in assisted living facilities. She wished more facilities used these types of technology to help their residents become more active and to enhance residence’s spiritual well being.   She also said that most pianos sit dormant without anyone who knows how to play them. The digital piano allows people to experience a live piano without having to know how to play the piano.

A lot of times mom doesn’t understand what eLease actually does sometimes.  It was a pleasure to share a real world example with her and make a difference for their guests.  I am proud we are able to provide a service so many will enjoy!  Mom was right.

Monday morning the first Monday of March, I turn on the news and hear about oil hitting $103.00 per Barrel. Barak and Hillary are going head to head and gold hits another record. Since I am running about 5 minutes ahead of schedule I pull into a gas station that says gas is $3.19 a gallon. As I pull I see the gas station worker walk over to change the gas to $3.29 that would have cost me an extra $1.60 for the fill up. I was the last customer at that price which I found unsettling. Even scarier is that I heard on the news that gas could go to $4.00 per gallon that will have huge effects on the small business community and households in general.

Some economists have compared this economy to the early 80’s. I can see the comparison but there is no interest rate comparison. The silver lining for entrepreneurs and households is at least interest rates have decreased substantially. This will allow entrepreneurs to borrow with less cost which should help significantly.

I cannot remember a time when the Federal Reserve has lowered the borrowing costs by 1.25% in a month and gas has increased over 13% at the same time. I am started to feel sea sick from all the information and the rapid changes in the capital markets.

With instability opportunities are created. I am always amazed by the resiliency of entrepreneurs to grow their businesses in changing times. We spoke to a vendor today that is selling wind turbines to small businesses in the Midwest to help reduce energy costs! Every market correction has an opportunity to flourish new industry.

Leap Year –February 29, 2008

Just one day.  What’s the big deal right?  With all the talk of doom and gloom everywhere in the news sometimes it can be hard to be an optimist.  However being an entrepreneur you don’t have that option.  In the world of the entrepreneur the glass is always half full.   How many times do we wish we had an extra day in the week or a day in the month to create new opportunities?  They should call Leap Year Entrepreneur Day because it is the only day we have to really catch up.  I for one appreciate the day to help wrap up another request from our customers.

In fact, we funded an entrepreneur in Texas that spent his Leap Year Day flying to California to pick up his new 2006 Cement Truck.  Upon his instructions we wired his vendor $173,500 by 10:00 AM and he started his drive back to Texas.  I bet he appreciated the extra day to get back to see his family.

When many business owners lease for the first time it changes forever the way they look at equipment, budgets and financing. It is simple to spot a potential leasing fanatic. All it takes it a passionate entrepreneur and a business model with growth potential.

Here is how it works: a business owner has a goal they are focused on achieving. Most good business owners make detailed budgets and plans to achieve their goals. Experienced business owners have learned to tie their expectations to their timelines and budgets; they realize that growth usually takes longer then expected.

Leasing frees your business from constraining equipment budgets. It speeds up your growth cycle significantly. The transition from leasing customer to leasing fanatic occurs once the business model is proven and the company has enhanced profits directly resulting from the equipment they leased. The first month that a business owner sees on their books how much more they are making with their new equipment in proportion to how much money they are spending on their equipment is when they fully appreciate the value of leasing.

If it worked once well, lets try it again. Many businesses just need equipment to grow. By leasing equipment they can dramatically increase what they can acquire in short period of time. With one lease under their belt business, owners come back to elease.com to finance additional equipment to continue their growth.

Networking equipment leasing is a good example of an industry that can create some leasing fanatics. For example, if you are an ISP (Internet Service Provider) you need computers to sell web site space to your clients. Presumably your clients are paying you monthly for your service so you can apply those monthly payments directly to a lease payment for a new machine and rapidly expand your business.

eLease has countless business with dozens of leases with us and they are always looking for more. It is one of the most satisfying parts of my job to see a company realizing the benefits of leasing to grow their dreams.

Sometimes examples help illustrate abstract concepts like leasing. We are working with a film production company that has about 4 years in business and is trying to expand. The economics of their business provides a clear example of how leasing can help any business grow.

In the video production industry equipment doesn’t come cheap. Professional cameras range from tens of thousand of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars and with each piece of equipment there are necessary accessories which always end up costing thousands of dollars. And that is just the beginning. You need professional monitors, decks, expensive editing software and lighting packages.

This particular client has several projects happening at the same time and they wanted to increase their productivity by expanding their editing capabilities. They didn’t have enough capital to purchase the editing equipment required and were at a standstill.

When I ran the numbers for the client it made their decision easy. The equipment cost about 10,000 and it would take them months, if not years, to have enough money to purchase the equipment with revenues from the business. Their clients usually pay 60 days after the work is completed and they had a limited amount of work they could do given their existing infrastructure.

These clients bill their customers about $750 a day for editing and were not able to bill more because they only had one editing system to work on. You can lease $10,000 of equipment for as low as 225 dollars a month, far less than one day of editing. The numbers made their decision easy. By leasing the editing equipment they can spend less than half a day a month paying for their system and the rest of the month is profit to the company. The question for the business owner was clear: will you have use for the editing system for more than one day a month moving forward. The answer was naturally yes and leasing the editing system allowed them to remove a bottleneck of their production line and expand their business exponentially.

People occasionally ask if eLease.com can finance software and the answer is yes. As long as the software is coming from a manufacturer we can verify and the software is critical to your business.   eLease works with over 100 software firms to provide leasing services to their customers.

It is hard for a lot of business owners to wrap their minds around the concept of leasing software since it is not a physical piece of equipment. For leasing companies, software is riskier investment because there is nothing to resell if a company is unable to make its payments.

Every year CFOs find a larger and larger portion of their budget being allocated for software. It is an integral part of doing business these days and can be quite costly. Leasing or financing software is worth considering because it allows businesses to get the full versions of certain programs they would otherwise not be able afford. eLease.com can also finance the support and annual contracts to sweeten the deal.   With products like Great Plains software eLease.com is able to finance specific modules with just a one-page addendum.

For example, eLease.com just funded a lease for a web services company for $30,000 of Foundry Network equipment. This particular company has been in business for 4 years and wanted to structure their financing for 24 months with a Fair Market Value Option buyout.  We were able to get the software funded in just 2 days. This is the 12 lease we have funded for this customer who continues to grow and use leasing and financing to build their business.