Short-term opportunities are often the key to charging up your business’s growth and making the profits you need to support that expansion over time. Unfortunately, rush orders and extra-large client jobs are unpredictable, which means you need a way to access working capital quickly, without upsetting your regular cash flow. That typically means financing the money, but luckily you have a lot of options for that.

1. Open Credit Lines Earmarked for Funding Rush Orders

Business lines of credit are flexible, low-cost instruments that you can reuse without applying for a new round of financing each time as long as you pay them back down. They’re essentially an ongoing self-managed line of access to capital, so you can leave them dormant for months and then tap into the funds when you have a big job. Minimum payments tend to be quite low, so assimilating them into your cash flow should be easy, and when the big order pays off you can take care of the bulk of the balance on your line easily.

2. Choose an Asset-Based Loan or Cash Advance

Asset-based financing has become very popular because it is easy to customize to your business model. If you have a consumer-facing store that does a lot of credit card transactions, you can use a merchant cash advance to access working capital against your future income. You could also finance invoices if you use invoice billing, and there are inventory loan options. Most importantly, you can maximize your working capital by taking out a multi-asset loan that combines the equity in your equipment and commercial properties with the value in business assets like your inventory and invoices. Sometimes that’s the best way to access the most capital possible.

3. Refinance Commercial Real Estate To Access Equity

If you don’t want to deal with cash advances against your income or credit lines, you can always refinance a commercial property to access the equity in it. There are a lot of options for loans that give you cash-out capital while using a piece of real estate to control the costs, but one of the most popular is the three-year asset loan. It only requires you to pay interest for the term, but the principal is due at once at the end. This gives you the freedom to pay as you make money, with minimal commitments if you have a slow month and need to cut back to accommodate other costs. That’s why some businesses use this option as a regular way to finance long-term operational budgets.