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Can equipment payments start when your season does?
Seasonal and deferred payment schedules exist on most equipment finance paper. What they cost is small; what they do to your covenant position is not.
Drafted with AI assistance. Not yet independently checked. Nobody has verified the claims on this page against a source, so treat the figures and legal points as a starting point rather than as settled, and confirm anything you are about to act on. How we check things.
Can I get equipment finance payments that start when my season starts?
Yes, in most cases. Equipment finance companies routinely write skip-payment schedules that collect only in your trading months, and deferred schedules that start 60 or 90 days after funding. The cost of the deferral itself is modest because the interest is simply earned over a slightly longer effective life, but the payments in your working months are much larger, and that is the number to test. On a 96,000 five-year contract at an illustrative 8.9 per cent, an eight-payments-a-year schedule costs about 900 more in total but raises each payment by roughly half.
You need the machine in March and the revenue starts in May. Equipment finance companies have sold into seasonal trades for decades and the structures exist. The useful question is not whether you can get one, but which of the three shapes fits, and what each costs.
- Level monthly: 1,988 a month for 60 months. Total paid 119,289.
- Seasonal skip, paying only April through November: 3,005 a month for eight months a year, 40 payments over five years. Total paid 120,195. The extra cost of the structure across five years is about 906. Each payment is 51 per cent larger than the level payment.
- Ninety-day deferral then level payments over the remaining 57 months: 2,118 a month. Total paid 120,714, about 1,426 more than level.
The pattern is consistent: deferral is cheap and concentration is expensive in cash-flow terms, not in interest terms. You pay a few hundred dollars a year more for the structure and you take on a payment half again as large in the months you make money.
Which structure fits which problem
The part that catches people
A skip schedule raises your in-season payment by half. Everything that tests against your monthly obligation now tests against the larger number.
What to ask for, in order
- Ask for a deferral before you ask for a skip. It is cheaper, simpler, and does not distort your monthly ratios for five years.
- Ask for the exact payment dates and amounts as a schedule, on paper, before signing. Not "payments start in April" — the actual list of 40 or 57 dates.
- Ask whether the skip months can be changed later. Some contracts allow one revision of the schedule; most do not. A crew that picks up a large snow contract in year two may want to move to level payments.
- Ask what the same deal costs with level payments. Get both quotes. On the numbers above the difference is 906 over five years, which is a reasonable price for matched cash flow. If the difference comes back as several thousand, the pricing is doing something other than interest and you should ask what.
- Ask how the lender treats a missed in-season payment. A skip schedule has only eight collection opportunities a year, so one missed payment is a larger share of the annual obligation and may trip an event of default faster than it would on a level contract.
What to have ready
Seasonal structures are underwritten on the seasonality being real and documented. Three years of monthly bank statements showing the pattern is the evidence — not an explanation of it. If you are a newer business without three years, signed contracts for the coming season do a lot of work, as does a supplier or a vendor finance programme that already understands the trade.
Have the equipment quote itemised. Attachments, delivery, installation and training are sometimes financeable and sometimes not, and a seasonal schedule written against a number that later shrinks will be re-papered, which costs time you do not have in March.
What to refuse
Refuse a schedule where the skip months are described in the sales conversation but not in the payment schedule attached to the contract. Refuse a deferral that is priced as a fee added to the amount financed rather than as an interest adjustment, unless you have compared the total of payments both ways. And refuse to sign in March for a machine delivering in May without confirming when the first payment is due — the commonest version of this problem is not a bad structure, it is a good structure whose clock started at signing rather than at delivery.
Where this applies
Related questions
Can I get equipment finance payments that start when my season starts?
Yes, in most cases. Equipment finance companies routinely write skip-payment schedules that collect only in your trading months, and deferred schedules that start 60 or 90 days after funding. The cost of the deferral itself is modest because the interest is simply earned over a slightly longer effective life, but the payments in your working months are much larger, and that is the number to test. On a 96,000 five-year contract at an illustrative 8.9 per cent, an eight-payments-a-year schedule costs about 900 more in total but raises each payment by roughly half.
Which funding products does this apply to?
Business Line of Credit, Equipment Financing. Each has its own page listing the funders in this directory that offer it and what each one publishes about its terms.
Is this specific to landscaping?
It is written around how a landscaping business actually generates and collects cash, which is what makes its funding problem different. The mechanics transfer; the arithmetic may not.
Who writes this?
The Find Me Funders research desk. Some drafting is AI-assisted, and every page that is says so at the top, including whether a person has checked its claims yet.
How do I know a figure here is right?
Where a page carries the green notice, its claims were checked against the sources listed at the end and a reviewer is named. Where it carries the amber one, nobody has verified it yet and you should confirm anything you plan to act on.
Are the examples real deals?
No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What any particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it.
Why do you never say what a typical rate is?
Because we cannot source it. A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it. Where a lender publishes a figure, we show that figure and say where it came from.
Is this financial or legal advice?
No. It is general information about how these products work. Outcomes depend on your contract and your state, and a lawyer or accountant licensed where you are is the person to ask about your situation.
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