Working Capital Finance Under Two Years, No Property
What a business trading under two years with no property security can access, which facilities set their own age test, and what government help exists.
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Under Two Years · No Property · Business Finance
Two years of financials is the line most lenders draw, and without property there is nothing to put behind the gap. Some facilities are assessed on the debtor, some on the asset and some on the card sales, and each one publishes its own minimum trading period.
Quick Answer
A business under two years old with no property to offer is not out of options. The facilities that can help assess something other than your own history: the customer behind your invoice, the asset being bought, or your card takings. Each funder sets its own age test.
Also called: new business finance without property, business loan under two years trading.
What finance can a business under two years old get without property security?
A business under two years old with no property to offer can still reach four families of finance, because each one is assessed on something other than your own trading record. Invoice and debtor finance is assessed on the customer who owes you. Equipment and asset finance is assessed on the thing being bought. A sales or revenue based advance is assessed on the card takings coming through your terminal. Trade and purchase order finance is assessed on the order and the supplier behind it.
What falls away is the lane most people ask for first. A bank term facility or an overdraft is assessed on your financials and usually on property as well, and whether two years of trading is a hard rule for those is a question of its own, answered in the guide to a business overdraft under two years of trading. This page starts from the harder position, which is that there is no property to put behind the gap at all.
If you want the map before the detail, the working capital loans guide sets out what each facility is and how it is priced, and working capital finance for self-employed business owners is where Switchboard arranges it. One thing to hold onto before any of it: business purpose credit sits outside the National Credit Code, so the consumer disclosure, responsible lending and hardship rules that sit behind a home loan do not apply to a facility written for your business.
Which facilities are assessed on the debtor or the asset rather than on you?
Four facilities move the assessment off you and onto something else, and that is the whole reason they are open to a young business. From the funder's side of the desk the first question on these products is not how long you have been trading, it is who owes you, what the asset is worth second hand, or how steady the takings are.
| Facility | What it is assessed on | What it does not rest on | Where it falls down |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invoice and debtor finance | The creditworthiness of the business customer who owes the invoice | Your own trading record, and property | No invoices to other businesses means no facility. Every funder read excludes consumer sales and invoices raised before delivery |
| Equipment and asset finance | The asset being bought, its type, its age and what it resells for | Property, in most of the lane | The age test does not vanish. One financier's published criteria still ask for two years with an ABN, as Table 2 shows for the neighbouring product |
| Sales or revenue based advance | The card takings moving through your terminal or payment gateway | Financial statements, and property | Repayment is a share of daily takings, so the facility takes more in a strong week and less in a quiet one. The provider read offers it by invitation only |
| Trade and purchase order finance | The confirmed order and the supplier arrangement sitting behind it | Property, in most cases | The funder read publishes no eligibility criteria at all, so there is no way to size your chances before you ask |
Invoice and debtor finance is the purest version of it. The funder advances against invoices you have already earned, and the risk it is pricing is your customer's ability to pay, not yours. That is why a two month old business invoicing a national contractor can be an easier file than a five year old business invoicing consumers, and why the conversation turns immediately to who your debtors are and what your cash flow cycle looks like.
Equipment and asset finance works on the same logic with a different security: the financier can take the asset back and sell it, so the asset carries part of the risk the trading record would otherwise have to carry. A sales or revenue based advance reads the card takings instead, and repays itself as a slice of them, which is a different pricing shape from a term facility and is set out in the merchant cash advance comparison. Trade and purchase order finance sits behind a confirmed order, funding the supplier so the order can be filled.
What does each of those ask a young business to show?
Each funder publishes its own test, and on one product those published tests run from no minimum trading history at all to two years. That is not a rounding difference. It is the same product, sold into the same market, with an eligibility gate that varies by more than the whole life of the business asking.
| Type of funder | Published minimum trading history | Other published minimums | Source and read date |
|---|---|---|---|
| A specialist invoice financier | None published. The eligibility list runs to an ABN or ACN, outstanding invoices with Australian businesses, and invoicing after delivery, and the page names start-ups among the businesses it serves | Facilities published from $50,000 | Funder published, no page date shownRead at the funder's own page, 21 September 2026 |
| A specialist invoice financier | None published. The provider states it "assesses your customers' creditworthiness rather than requiring years of trading history" | None published | Funder published, no page date shownRead at the funder's own page, 21 September 2026 |
| A non-bank invoice financier | "A minimum of 6 months in operation, demonstrating consistent invoicing and collections" | "a minimum of $10,000 in invoices per month", business to business sales only | Funder published, no page date shownRead at the funder's own page, 21 September 2026 |
| A broker platform | "an active ABN and have been trading for at least 6 months" | "a minimum of $1,000 in outstanding invoices per month", accounting software integration | Platform published, page dated 2 December 2025Read at the funder's own page, 21 September 2026 |
| A government agency | "minimum 2 years profitable trading" | "minimum sales of $500,000 per annum", at least 50 per cent Indigenous ownership | Government published, page updated 14 August 2025Indigenous Business Australia, listed at business.gov.au/grants-and-programs/invoice-finance, read 21 September 2026 |
Where this usually lands is that a business gets one answer, treats it as the market's answer, and stops. The table says otherwise. Two of the five funders read publish no minimum trading period, two publish six months, and the two year test belongs to a government program with its own separate gates. So the useful move is to ask for the published eligibility criteria in writing, check the date on the page you are reading, and ask which of the minimums is a policy and which is a starting point.
Alongside the trading test, each of them asks for a version of the same evidence: an active ABN, a bank account the trading actually moves through, invoices raised to businesses after delivery rather than in advance, and identification. On the neighbouring products the published position is thinner rather than better. One asset financier publishes a two year test with a turnover floor. The sales based provider publishes no trading period at all and issues by invitation. The trade finance funder read publishes no eligibility criteria whatsoever, which is itself the finding, and means the only way to know is to ask. Where nothing is published, this page prints nothing, and the invoice finance guide is the place the mechanics are set out in full.
Do the government backed loans accept a business under two years?
Generally no. Two of the three government backed programs read on 21 September 2026 require two years of trading, and the one that accepts a younger business is open only to businesses at least half owned by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, under a turnover cap. So the exception is real but narrow, and it runs the opposite way to the usual rule: it is open only before the two year mark.
| Program and owner | Published trading test | Other published gates | Amount and term as published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start-Up Finance Package, Indigenous Business AustraliaListed at business.gov.au/grants-and-programs/business-development-and-assistance-program, page updated 14 August 2025, read 21 September 2026 | "have been trading for less than 2 years" | At least 18 years old, of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent, at least 50 per cent ownership, "have less than $400,000 in actual annual turnover", a commercially viable business model | Up to $150,000, with up to 30 per cent of the loan as a non-repayable grant towards business assets, seven year term, minimum security requirements, applications accepted at any time |
| Invoice Finance, Indigenous Business AustraliaListed at business.gov.au/grants-and-programs/invoice-finance, page updated 14 August 2025, read 21 September 2026 | "minimum 2 years profitable trading" | At least 50 per cent Indigenous ownership, "minimum sales of $500,000 per annum" | Not published on the page read |
| Small Business Export Loan, Export Finance Australiaexportfinance.gov.au/small-business/, read 21 September 2026 | "Trading for at least two years" | "Turnover between $250K and $10 million", "20% of revenue from export sales", an export related funding need. The agency adds that below that export share it may still support export related contracts and export market development costs | $20,000 to $350,000 |
The Start-Up Finance Package is the one that runs the other way, and the same agency runs the invoice finance program at the other end of the ladder, where the test is two years of profitable trading and half a million dollars of annual sales. The Small Business Export Loan is the third, and it is for exporters with two years behind them. Read each one at the source before you rely on it, because two of the three pages were last updated in August 2025 and criteria move without notice. Outside those doors the question goes back to commercial business lending, priced commercially.
What do the state small business programs offer instead?
On the state pages read on 21 September 2026, what is offered to a young business is advice, grants and referral rather than lending. Here is exactly what was checked and what came back, so you can judge the gap rather than take the claim.
- The New South Wales business support page, last modified 10 September 2026, lists free business advice, a business bureau, grants and funding, an export program, training and licensing support. No loan or finance program appears on it.
- The Victorian page covering Aboriginal business grants and loans, updated 15 July 2026, does list finance, and all three of the programs it lists are run by the national agency rather than by the state.
The instrument that is worth your time instead is the national finder, which is where the state and territory programs are listed alongside the federal ones. The grants and programs finder describes itself as a free guided search for grants, funding and support programs from across government, and it filters by state and territory, by support type with loans as one of the options, and by business stage with less than two years as one of the choices. That last filter is the one that matters here, because it is the only place read on the day where the under two years position is a first class search term rather than a disqualification.
What should you be doing in the twelve months before you qualify?
The work in the twelve months before you cross two years is mostly about making a thin file readable, because a young business is assessed off its bank statements and its invoicing pattern rather than off financial statements it does not have yet.
- Invoice businesses, after delivery. Every invoice funder read excludes consumer sales and invoices raised before the work is done. If any part of your revenue can be moved to business customers on commercial terms, it is the single change that opens the most doors.
- Make the pattern consistent. A funder publishing a six month test is testing for a pattern of invoicing and collections, not for a birthday. Steady monthly invoicing with clean collections reads better at seven months than lumpy invoicing at eighteen.
- Keep one business account and run everything through it. A file assembled from a personal account and a business account mixed together costs you the benefit of the trading you have actually done.
- Keep the card takings in one place. If you take cards, splitting them across two providers halves the record each one can see, and the sales based lane is assessed on exactly that record.
- Diary the date you cross two years. Several of the published tests change on that day, and the government program that accepts you under two years closes on it.
If property does come into the picture later, that is a different assessment with its own guide, the new ABN business loan and property security guide, and the wider lane sits across the property lending hub. Until then, the shape of what you can reach without it is in the working capital loans guide.
Two years of financials is a real line, but it is not the only line, and it is not the same line at every funder. The facilities that can look at a business under two years old with no property are the ones assessed on something else: the debtor behind the invoice, the asset being bought, the card takings, or the confirmed order. On invoice finance alone the published minimum trading history ran from none at all to two years across the five sources read on 21 September 2026, and the government backed program that accepts a business under two years does so as a condition rather than as an exception.
Key takeaway: ask each funder for its published eligibility criteria in writing, because on this question the market does not have one answer, it has five.Frequently Asked Questions
A business under two years old can use invoice finance at some funders and not at others, because the trading history test on this product is set by each funder rather than by any rule. Of the five published positions read on 21 September 2026, two set no minimum trading history at all, two set six months, and one, a government backed program, sets two years of profitable trading. What decides it is whether you invoice other businesses after the work is delivered, which is the shape invoice finance is built around.
Equipment finance looks at both, and the asset is what makes it reachable for a young business, because an asset can be repossessed and resold while a trading record cannot. The age test does not disappear, though: one asset financier's own published criteria, read on 21 September 2026 on a page it had updated six days earlier, require an Australian ABN trading for two years or more with annual turnover of at least $250,000. See what an unsecured business lender can take.
There is one government backed loan among the three read on 21 September 2026 that accepts a business trading under two years, and its test runs the other way: applicants must have been trading for less than two years. The other two programs read both require two years, so outside that one door the question returns to commercial business lending.
If you have business customers but no property and no trading history, the invoice is the asset you actually hold, and invoice or debtor finance is the facility built to read it. The funders that publish no minimum trading period assess the creditworthiness of the customer who owes you rather than your own file, so a short history behind strong customers is a better position than it feels like. What is worth protecting in the meantime is the cash flow record itself, because a young file gets read off bank statements.
A history of card sales does help, because a sales or revenue based advance is assessed on the takings moving through your terminal rather than on financial statements. On the provider read on 21 September 2026 the facility is offered by invitation on the basis of consistent and continuous card processing, repayment is taken as a fixed percentage of daily card sales, and no minimum trading period is published at all. The trade off is the pricing shape, which is what the merchant cash advance comparison sets against a term facility.
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