Business Equipment Financing vs. Office Equipment Financing

Is there a difference in financing standard business equipment like machinery, tools or vehicles and office equipment like copy machines or computers? When it comes to financing – there really is no difference!

Equipment lenders are only concerned about a few common criteria when financing equipment. These criteria are:

• Life Of The Asset: It doesn’t matter if you are buying a computerized routing machine with a useful life of 10 years or a copy machine with a useful life of 5 years. Equipment lenders just want to match the loan term with the useful life of the piece of equipment to ensure that you are not still paying for an assets that you cannot use.
• Value Of The Equipment: This is very straight forward. No equipment lender wants to lend your business more money than the equipment is worth – not only to protect themselves should they have to take the equipment back but to protect the business as well – keeping the monthly payments affordable.
• Location Of The Equipment: Equipment lenders have jurisdictions that they operate in. Thus, in order to protect their investments they like to keep that equipment within their jurisdictions. Example: A business buys equipment in Florida and the transaction is governed by the laws of Florida. The business then takes that equipment to Texas and defaults. The equipment lender might not have any recourse in Texas to recover the equipment or to pursue additional payments.

Therefore, it really doesn’t matter what type of equipment (office or business) or really how you will use it.

Equipment lenders earn their money by making loans backed by physical equipment and if you can demonstrate an ability and willingness to repay the loan per the agreement – then your business should be able to finance all the equipment (business or office) it needs.