Equipment Lease / Financing

Equipment Lease / Financing

Equipment Lease / Financing

Equipment financing is the use of a loan or lease to purchase or borrow hard assets for your business. This type of financing might be used to purchase or borrow any physical asset, such as a restaurant oven or a company car. There is an enormous number of variations on equipment financing that cater to specific types of businesses and equipment. The most important thing to understand about equipment financing, broadly speaking, is that it’s for financing a physical asset. Why does this matter? Unlike with, say, a working capital loan, the asset you’re purchasing serves as a kind of collateral. If you default on your loan or lease, the lender can repossess the asset. Because of this, equipment financing tends to be a more cost-effective and lower-risk way to acquire equipment than other forms of financing.

Whether you’re running a restaurant, a construction company, or even working out of your home, chances are your business needs equipment to perform its basic functions. If you can’t pay for equipment out of pocket, your best option may be to seek equipment financing. While equipment financing might sound pretty straightforward on the surface, exploring this seemingly niche area of financing can be a bit like falling down a rabbit hole.

When you’re seeking equipment financing, you’ll generally want an idea of what you’re buying before you even contact your equipment financer. You’ll also want an idea of who you’re planning to buy it from.

That’s because, in most cases, your equipment financer is covering either all or a percentage of the cost of your equipment. In fact, many equipment financers will directly pay the vendor for the equipment without the money ever entering your bank account.

The exact terms of your financing will differ depending on whether you’re getting a loan or lease (more on this below), but most equipment financing terms last somewhere between two and seven years. Over that time, you’ll typically make monthly payments to your equipment financer to pay off the principal plus interest. Should you default on your loan or lease, your equipment financer will typically repossess your equipment to resell it.

In addition to the initial cost and obsolescence, leasing your equipment can also provide your business with a substantial tax advantage. While you should always consult with your tax advisor first, most equipment leases can be structured so that you can write off 100% of the annual lease payments. By contrast, current tax laws only allow a business to write off the interest paid on loans. However, because a lease is a rental and the business is only using the equipment, the business can usually write off all of the monthly lease payments just like any other legitimate business expense.

The last major advantage of leasing your equipment instead of buying is that leasing allows you to not show the equipment on your balance sheet. Once again, this is because the equipment is being rented and therefore actually belongs to a different company than the one that is using it. For this reason leases are often referred to as “off balance sheet” financing and this can be a tremendous advantage to many businesses both large and small.

Big businesses prefer this option because they don’t want to own millions of dollars in equipment. This equipment will depreciate substantially with the day-to-day usage. Whoever owns the equipment is responsible for the depreciation on their balance sheet. Also, large corporations may require that the board of directors approve any new loans to the business since. This can make it difficult for the management of the business to operate efficiently. But a lease is not a loan and therefore may not require approval by the board for the managers to get the equipment they need. In smaller businesses this can also be an advantage because they will not show additional debt on the balance sheet that will affect their ability to borrow money in the future. If you are considering selling your business, this may also make your company more attractive to potential buyers since you will be showing less debt on the balance sheet.

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