This Startup Bridges Cash Flow Gaps, One Invoice at a Time Fundbox chases down the payments for you. Here's how it works.

Chasing down late payments from clients was par for the course for Martin Stevens. Diversified Technical Support, his IT company in Portage, Ind., regularly carried up to $5,000 in outstanding balances per year. That is, until Stevens signed up for Fundbox—a financial-technology company that doles out low-cost advances on invoices of $100 to $20,000.

Gone are his days of sending Net 7 invoices and praying for payment. Since late 2013, Stevens has used Fundbox to clear $22,000 in accounts. He finds that by extending payment terms to customers to 90 days and using Fundbox to pick up the slack, he gets paid faster and more often.

Besides liberating cash flow at a lower rate than any offered by his credit cards, Fundbox has enabled Stevens to increase his business due to the easier payment terms. "Our average transaction has grown from the $150-to-$200 range to the $250-to-$350 range," he says.