My company has a line of credit from our bank. Thankfully, we've only had to draw heavily on it once, but it was a life saver at the time.
We had a situation where we simultaneously hired new employees, kicked off several sizable consulting projects and were stuck with late payments on several projects. As a result we were cash-flow negative for several months. Drawing on the line of credit helped keep payroll, AP, etc running smoothly. As a small company it's a nice low cost way to have ready access to money which you can use for anything (not just purchases).
With decent credit we were able to get a line capped at about 1/6th of our yearly revenues with a ~4.25% interest rate. This was a much higher limit and better rate that we could get with AMEX advances. The only downside is the amount time and paperwork involved, since you generally need to provide tax returns, P&L, balance sheets, AR statements, and go through lengthy approval process.
We had a situation where we simultaneously hired new employees, kicked off several sizable consulting projects and were stuck with late payments on several projects. As a result we were cash-flow negative for several months. Drawing on the line of credit helped keep payroll, AP, etc running smoothly. As a small company it's a nice low cost way to have ready access to money which you can use for anything (not just purchases).
With decent credit we were able to get a line capped at about 1/6th of our yearly revenues with a ~4.25% interest rate. This was a much higher limit and better rate that we could get with AMEX advances. The only downside is the amount time and paperwork involved, since you generally need to provide tax returns, P&L, balance sheets, AR statements, and go through lengthy approval process.