How to fund a large order you've just won

The phone call comes, the order is real, and it’s three times anything you’ve handled before. After the first rush of excitement comes the arithmetic: materials to buy, perhaps casual staff to hire, freight to book, and a customer who will pay 60 days after delivery at the earliest. A big order can be the making of a business. It can also drain the account so thoroughly that regular bills go unpaid while the job is still on the floor.

The difference is almost always in how the order is funded.

Draw the order’s cash curve

Before talking to any lender, sketch the order in two halves.

Before delivery. Everything you spend between saying yes and handing over the goods or finishing the work: raw materials, components, extra labour, subcontractors, freight, packaging, perhaps a piece of equipment.

After invoice. The wait between issuing the invoice and the money landing. With big customers, this is often the longer stretch.

These halves suit different kinds of finance. Funding both with one product, especially a fixed-repayment loan that starts immediately, is a common and expensive mistake.

Stage	Main costs	Finance that fits
Before delivery	Materials, components, labour, freight	Trade or purchase order finance, a short-term loan, a property-secured loan, or a line of credit
During delivery (services and construction)	Labour and materials across milestones	Progress payment finance against claims
After invoice	Waiting for the customer to pay	Invoice finance or a line of credit
Exports	Production plus shipping time	Export finance, including government-backed options

Big customers pay slowly. Plan for it

It’s natural to assume a large, well-known customer will pay on time. Often they pay reliably but slowly. Figures released by the payment times regulator in February 2026 showed big companies needed 64 days, on average, to settle 95% of what they owed small suppliers over January to June 2025, a noticeable lengthening from 58 days in the previous period.

So when you model the order, use the customer’s real payment behaviour, not the terms written on the purchase order. Ask other suppliers, check whether the customer publishes its payment times on the public register, and read your contract for when an invoice is treated as accepted. A 30-day term that starts only after a lengthy approval process is really a 60-day term.

Who the lender is really assessing

On a large order, the lender is weighing three parties, not one:

• You. Can you actually deliver? Have you done similar work, even at smaller scale? Do you have the people, space and equipment?
• The customer. Are they financially strong? For invoice finance, the customer’s ability to pay is the lender’s main security, so a listed company or government agency is very different from a start-up.
• The concentration. If this one customer will be 70% of next year’s revenue, lenders get cautious. Many apply a concentration limit to how much they’ll advance against a single debtor.

The documents that help most: the signed purchase order or contract, a costing showing your margin, supplier quotes, your recent bank statements and BAS, and anything showing your history with the customer.

Not sure where your order fits? Send us the order details and someone will walk through the funding with you.

Ask the customer first

The cheapest finance for a large order often comes from the customer. Before you borrow, try for:

• A deposit on signing, even 10 to 30% for custom or made-to-order work.
• Milestone billing: invoice at defined points rather than only on completion.
• Shorter terms on this order, perhaps in exchange for a small discount.
• Customer-paid materials: some buyers will pay suppliers directly for major inputs.

Many large customers have supplier programs that let you be paid early for a fee, sometimes called supply chain finance. It’s worth asking whether one exists.

The export case

If the order is going overseas, two extra points apply. Production and shipping add weeks before you can invoice, and collecting from an overseas buyer can take longer still. Export Finance Australia, a Commonwealth agency that backs exporters, offers a small business export loan of $20k to $350k, unsecured, for companies and trusts with an ACN, at least two years of trading and annual turnover of $250k or more, as at October 2026 according to its website. It can be used for export contracts and purchase orders, including pre-shipment working capital.

Banks and specialist trade financiers also fund export orders, often using letters of credit or export invoice finance.

Worked example: a manufacturer’s first national order

This is an illustration only. A steel fabrication business in Newcastle turns over $2.2m a year. A national hardware chain orders $640k of custom shelving, delivered in two batches over three months, with payment 60 days after each delivery.

Cost	Amount
Steel and fixings	$260k
Powder coating (subcontracted)	$70k
Extra labour over three months	$95k
Freight to distribution centres	$35k
Total cost before payment	$460k
Expected margin	$180k

The owner first negotiates a 15% deposit, $96k, on signing. That leaves $364k to fund.

• Before delivery: the deposit plus a short-term facility of $240k, secured by a second mortgage on the family home, covers the steel and powder coating. The bank declined because the order would make the chain over half of next year’s revenue.
• After invoice: once each batch is delivered, an invoice finance facility advances against the chain’s invoices. Because the customer is a large, established retailer, the financier is comfortable despite the concentration, and later advances progressively clear the short-term facility.
• Labour and freight for the first batch come from the existing overdraft. For the second batch, they’re paid from the invoice finance advances on batch one.

When the chain pays, the invoice finance facility clears. The total finance cost across the job comes to a small fraction of the $180k margin, and the business has a national customer on its books.

Our invoice finance calculator is a useful way to test the after-invoice stage on your own order.

Before you sign the order

1. Cost the job properly, including finance and a contingency.
2. Confirm the customer’s real payment times.
3. Ask for a deposit or milestones.
4. Line up before-delivery and after-invoice funding before you commit.
5. Check your regular bills and wages are still covered while the order runs.
6. Read our guide on winning a big contract for the situational side, and funding rapid growth if this order is the first of several.

Banks are often happy to fund large orders for established clients, and their facilities are usually the most affordable. When the order is bigger than your history, or the concentration worries them, non-bank options are designed for exactly that moment.

Turning the order into delivered work

When a major buyer picks you, it’s proof your product stands up. The worst outcome is turning it down, or accepting it and then struggling to pay suppliers halfway through. With the right structure in place, you can take it on calmly.

The form is a one-minute task, and simply enquiring has no effect on your credit rating. We won’t hawk the order around a crowd of financiers: a single team reviews it, and one of our specialists rings to discuss the job. Tell us the order value, the customer and the payment terms as they really are, and we can match the funding to both halves of the job from the start.

Fund my large order →