Why solar installers wait so long to get paid
On most residential solar and storage jobs, the install is the fast part. Getting paid is the slow part. You finish the work, send the invoice, and then wait on calendar net terms, often net 30, net 60, or sometimes net 90, which simply means payment is due that many days after the invoice date. Net 60 is common in construction and other large-project trades where the buyer holds cash longer than the contractor would like. On third-party-owned solar, the lag can stretch further because final payment is often tied to permission to operate (PTO), which commonly runs two to twelve weeks after install depending on the utility. For a typical installer running roughly $250k to $750k a month, mostly 8kW residential jobs around $26,400 each (illustrative), that gap is the difference between a busy month and a tight one. Early pay closes it: you get most of the invoice now instead of in two or three months.
How early pay actually works
Early pay is a sale, not a borrow. You pick an invoice you have already earned and that the payor has approved. The funding company buys it from you and sends you most of the invoice value right away, often within about a day. It then waits on the payor itself and sends you the rest, minus one agreed fee, once the payor pays. You are never chasing the collection and you never write a check back. The cash you got up front is yours to keep, because it is value you already earned for work you already did. The only cost is the one flat fee you agree to before anything happens, so there is nothing to true up and no surprise at the end.
Is this a loan? No, and here is the difference
This is the question most installers ask first, and the answer is no. A loan, a line of credit, or a merchant cash advance all put debt on your business that you have to pay back. Early pay does the opposite: you sell an asset you already own (an invoice you earned), so there is nothing owed back and no debt added to your books. Under standard accounting treatment, a true sale of a receivable removes the invoice from your balance sheet rather than recording a liability for it, because you have transferred the asset rather than borrowed against it. With early pay there is no monthly payment, no interest accruing, and no balance hanging over the next job. You are not borrowing against the future; you are collecting on the past, just sooner.
Early pay vs. an MCA vs. a line of credit
It helps to line them up. A business line of credit is revolving debt: you draw funds, you owe them back, and you pay interest on what you borrowed. A merchant cash advance (MCA) hands you a lump sum against your future sales and then pulls it back through daily or weekly withdrawals from your revenue, and its all-in cost can run extremely high. Both are money you have to repay out of work you have not done yet. Early pay is tied to a specific invoice you have already earned: the funding company is paid when that one invoice gets paid by the payor, not by draining your daily deposits, and your exposure is capped at the invoice itself. No repayment schedule, no daily sweep, no growing balance.
When early pay helps (and when it does not)
Early pay is most useful when your money is real but stuck: the work is done, the invoice is approved, and you just cannot wait 30 to 90 days for it to land while the next job already needs deposits, equipment, and crews. It lets your best month fund your next month instead of starving it. It is a poor fit when there is no earned, approved invoice yet (it cannot pay you for work you have not done or billed), or when you need a one-time lump sum for equipment or overhead unrelated to a specific receivable. Used well, it is simply a faster way to collect what you have already earned, on the invoices you choose, when the timing helps.