It may seem like we are seeing a growth of registered users, but a decline in new invoices available for purchase on Hiveterminal. But, the reality is that there have been over 60 invoices uploaded, yet only 20 came through to our market, a mere 30% of the total count. There were only a few invoices that didn’t meet our criteria (one had an invoice payer in bankruptcy and the other did not have a long enough funding period), whereas the rest were not confirmed by debtors and thus unable to come through to our marketplace. This is a huge percentage and needed to be addressed immediately.

With invoices pending confirmation from debtors, our focus needed to shift rapidly from SMEs to the largest companies, as they have the biggest number of incoming invoices. With the largest invoice payers on the market on board, the platform will not only get necessary invoices confirmed, but word of mouth will also help us get new companies faster. The companies that are in our funnel at the moment — finalizing their internal processes, informing their supply chains and giving us the green light to make a campaign using their names and brands — are important enterprises on the market and have international supply chains, which will also be in our favor soon.

But, this is not all we have in line to solve the “invoice confirmation problem” at Hiveterminal.

Adding Functionalities: Silent Factoring

Apart from giving the largest companies the possibility of buying their invoices before they hit the market — creating investment opportunities for them while hanging on to their support in bringing their vast supply chains to our platform — we needed a different approach to addressing the issue of nonconfirmed invoices. With more than two-thirds of invoices stuck in the confirmation process, this is clearly a problem for our business model — and something that needs to be taken care of immediately.

Giving invoice sellers an option of silent factoring will solve our problems and bring invoices directly to the marketplace. This will also enable higher discounts and thus higher returns for invoice buyers. Silent factoring involves the financing of receivables without notifying the recipients. Applied both when the supplier does not wish to notify recipients of the fact of using external financing or if the recipient does not consent to factoring — two of the most frequent reasons for invoices not being confirmed and sold.

Once the silent factoring option is enabled on Hiveterminal, we can expect a significant increase in invoices available for purchase on our marketplace. Not only will companies have the option to put invoices directly on the marketplace, it will attract those companies that would like to keep their external financing a secret. Our analysis shows that this is an important factor for the majority of companies using factoring.

Invoice sellers will be able to choose between silent (selling an invoice without notifying the invoice payer) and standard nonrecourse factoring, with higher discounts — and larger ROI for invoice payers — in the case of the silent option. We are currently finalizing our calculations and rates, but the first feedback we have received from invoice sellers that were consulted about it are encouraging. They all want the possibility and would use Hiveterminal more often if the silent factoring option is implemented.

We are currently in the process of creating a timeline for tech development, performing new discounting calculations, and starting the marketing materials creation for this important addition. The timeline has not been set yet, but this is a #1 priority for all our teams and our CTO Dejan & CFO Ugur.

In other news …

Hiveterminal was proudly showcased at the gala event of the Forum of Craft & Small Business, where the highest ranking members of the Slovenian government and national assembly met with the representatives of the Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia and different businesses to discuss future policies and trends in the local economy. We discussed the possibility for various state-owned companies using Hiveterminal as well as institutions like ministries and municipalities.