Single invoice factoring, also sold as spot factoring, funds one invoice once, with no commitment to fund the next one and no notice period to escape. It is the most expensive money per dollar advanced in this record and it is frequently the right answer anyway, because the alternative is not a cheaper facility but no facility at all.
What you actually pay for
You are paying for the funder to underwrite one customer, once, for one invoice, and to do it quickly. Every fixed cost of that assessment lands on a single transaction rather than being spread across a year of ledger, which is why the headline percentage on a spot deal looks so much worse than a whole-ledger rate. The comparison people make is the wrong one: the right question is not whether spot costs more than a committed facility, it is whether a committed facility was available to you at all and whether you wanted the notice period that comes with it.
When one invoice is genuinely the right thing to fund
A single unusually large order from a strong customer, where the work has to be paid for before the invoice is. A one-off gap created by a customer changing their payment run. A business whose ledger is too small or too concentrated for a whole-ledger facility to be offered. And a business that wants to test a funder's process on one transaction before signing a twelve-month agreement, which is a use of spot factoring that nobody advertises and that is worth more than most buyers realise.
What the factor is looking at
Your customer, chiefly. The invoice must be for work already completed and accepted, on terms that have not expired, with no dispute attached and no set-off available to the payer. The customer must be a business rather than a consumer and must be creditworthy in the factor's assessment, not yours. Your own credit file matters much less than in any other product on this site: Charter Capital publishes on its own page that no minimum credit score is required for its factoring, which is the clearest published statement of this principle in the record.
Questions people ask about single invoice factoring
How much does single invoice factoring cost?
No factor in this record publishes a rate for it. Expect the percentage on a single invoice to be higher than a whole-ledger rate, and ask for the discount rate, any fixed transaction fee and the reserve percentage together, because the headline is rarely the whole cost.
Can I factor one invoice without a contract?
That is the product: spot or single invoice factoring commits you to nothing beyond the one transaction. Check whether the agreement you are signing is genuinely single-transaction or a master agreement with a first draw under it, because the second is a different thing wearing the same name.
Will factoring one invoice affect my credit?
Factoring is a sale of a receivable rather than borrowing, so it does not usually appear as debt. Your customer will normally be notified to pay the factor, which is the change most businesses actually care about, and it is worth deciding whether that is acceptable before you start.