APay - levelling the recruitment playing field for clients

It has long been a frustration for small to medium business that the upfront costs of using a recruitment and staffing provider are seen as prohibitive from a cashflow perspective, standing as a towering impediment between them and what may well be the best talent in their field.

The APay system, an initiative of APositive Workforce Finance introduced in 2018, now offers businesses the option of paying permanent recruitment fees in instalments rather than as an up-front fee, finally conquering the impediment many small and medium sized businesses face in accessing professional recruitment services.

Megan Shorter, Managing Director of People Medical Consulting and a RCSA member, explained that their own attempts to establish a recruit now-pay later system to enable smaller businesses to access their services had not been very successful.

“We were attempting to do it beforehand by providing an extended due date on fees and having clients pay in instalments,” Shorter explained. “It wasn’t being direct debited, people would forget to pay and we would have to follow up forgotten payments.

“It was an incredible amount of administration for our team.”

Shorter said when contacted by APositive about the APay system, she was immediately curious.

“The system they were describing was exactly what we were looking for at that point in time,” she said. “The key benefit for our team is that we are able to get our fee upfront. Beforehand we weren’t getting it for up to six months which, from a cashflow perspective, can be really difficult.

Click here to watch Megan discuss the benefits of APay

“For our customers it gives them access to a service that they may not have had before. They may not have been able to use our services because it was cost prohibitive and they now have the opportunity to do that.

“The benefits are very wide and varied. It was incredibly easy to implement this system which is great.”

Shorter said the APay system now allows them to sign up clients without the burden of an upfront fee for recruitment services and their clients had responded positively and enthusiastically.

“The feedback has been phenomenal,” she said. “Our customers are so happy that they can implement it, they get a reminder every month and the money just comes out of their bank account.

“I honestly believe that the APay instalment options help us manage our cashflow better and for customers that's absolutely the case. We have all of these systems to help people manage their money. Being able to pay a large sum of money over a period of time is absolutely fantastic.”

Danny Marlow, co-founder and Director of APositive Workforce Finance, explained the APay system was developed after researching the needs of SME’s and what was restricting them in using recruitment and staffing agencies, where perm fees can range from 10 to 20 percent of gross remuneration, and may even exceed this.

When using APay, clients are able to engage recruitment and staffing agencies for a small upfront fee with the remaining fees paid in equal instalments over the course of the selected three to six month period.

“We had been hearing for some time that the lack of access to recruitment services because of prohibitive upfront costs was a significant impediment to SMEs and the recruitment sector building new and sustainable relationships,” Marlow explained.

“Our in-house tech team custom-built the APay system for the recruitment sector and it is really gaining traction as employers look to fill vacancies with the best talent on the market, rather than cost-cutting by running the recruitment process in-house.

“Over the years, we have funded more than $500 million in invoices to help hundreds of recruitment, labour hire and contractor businesses grow. This has ranged from small startups to multi-million dollar businesses, and introducing APay is a logical extension to assist both our clients and their customers to better manage their cashflow.”

For more information or to hear further what Megan has to say about her experience with APay click here.