Richard Branson once said, "Never take your eyes off the cash flow because it's the life blood of business." With a recession now in full swing, managing your cash flow is essential to your business's survival.

Trustio, a startup in rural Cañon City, CO, helps small businesses smooth out cash flow and brings trust to every service transaction.

Service-based businesses such as consultants, digital agency owners, home contractors, event planners, and freelancers working in the gig economy all know the pain of late and unpaid invoices. Unfortunately, every time a business has to wait to get paid the business is either slowing down or dying. This is especially true during a recession as late and unpaid invoices begin to stack up as clients (just trying to survive themselves) delay paying for services.

Rachel Beisel, owner of the digital marketing agency, LeadOut Sales of Boulder, Colorado, remarks, "We work with a lot of high growth, Seed and Series A+ funded startups; however, these clients can have their risks, especially with cashflow."

Beisel continues, "Recently, when a startup I was working with ran into trouble, I had to spend several weeks emailing and calling them, even investigating a legal route before we finally got paid several months later. Now we leverage Trustio to establish funding for a project in place before beginning work which works well for both the client and me"

Sadly, Beisel's story is far from uncommon. The statistics are staggering;

• On average, each small business has $84,000 in unpaid invoices (Shinar).
• A recently published report has found that late-paying clients owe $50,000 or more to nearly 60% of freelance workers (Pickard).
• In a 2019 survey of 503 home contractors, 74% didn't get paid on a project and had to file a mechanics lien within the last year (Wolfe).

With so many small business owners and gig workers living on the edge, it's easy to see why 82% fail because of poor cash flow management (Shinar).

Finally, there's a solution. Trustio founders, Brock Predovich, Andrei Zgirvaci, and Trevor Clements, are no strangers to the cash flow problems that can arise in service-based businesses and gig work. Having founded several service-based businesses in marketing, engineering, web development, and construction, Trustio's founders have felt first-hand the harmful effects that delayed and unpaid invoices can have on a business's cash flow. Now, they've built a simple, yet powerful invoicing and project management platform.

Just like any invoicing platform, Trustio allows service providers to receive payments from clients at any point in a service transaction. However, Trustio also has a very unique feature; Protected Payments.

Protected Payments allow the service provider to collect full payment upfront, for any project, before they begin work. Funds for a project are held in an account and then released immediately once tasks are completed. This feature grants clients peace of mind that their money is safe, and gives the service provider reassurance that they will get paid, on time, as soon as tasks within a project are complete.

Another noteworthy component of Trustio is its integrated project management features that allow service providers to communicate with clients, send pictures and files, and document their work. This communication keeps the client informed about the status of their project while building trust and satisfaction with the service provider.

With Trustio's invoicing and project management platform, service-based businesses and gig workers now have the tools they desperately need to stabilize their cash flow during the recession and thereafter.