What has to be true
Every condition that decides whether a tender or purchase-order deal can be funded, with the actual numbers. Nobody enjoys reading this page. It is far cheaper than finding out after you have sent six months of bank statements.
1. The work must be awarded
A written purchase order, an awarded RFQ, a signed contract or a letter of appointment. Any of those is an asset a funder can work with.
A quotation you have submitted is not. Neither is a verbal assurance, an email saying you are the preferred bidder, or a buyer telling you the paperwork is coming. We know how frustrating that is when you can see the order on the horizon, and it does not change the answer. The day it is awarded, come back.
2. The buyer must be creditworthy — and that is the main question
This is the part people find hardest to believe. On tender and purchase-order funding the funder is lending against the organisation that will pay you, far more than against your business. A national department and a two-year-old private company carrying the same order are two completely different deals at two completely different prices.
If your buyer cannot be credit-checked — no history, no balance sheet, no filed accounts — there is nothing to lend against, however good the order looks.
3. The gross margin must carry the cost
The number that kills more deals than anything else, and the one competitors mention without ever stating. Ours, plainly:
| Margin | What it means |
|---|---|
| Under 10% | Not fundable. The cost of funding eats the deal and you would be working for nothing or for a loss. We will tell you so rather than place it. |
| 10% to 19% | Placeable, but the panel narrows and pricing is less competitive. Worth a conversation about whether the order can be restructured. |
| 20% and above | Where most funders are comfortable. More of them will compete for it, which is what gets the price down. |
Gross margin here means the margin on this order — what you sell it for, less what it costs you to deliver — not your margin across the business.
4. The buyer will usually have to sign a deed of cession
A cession means the department or company that owes you money pays the funder directly, rather than paying you and trusting you to settle up afterwards. Most tender and purchase-order structures require one.
It is also the condition most likely to end a deal quietly, because applicants often do not discover it until the end. Ask your buyer early whether they will sign one. Some departments do it routinely. Some will not do it at all, and if yours will not, the deal will struggle wherever you take it — that is not a Tender Grow limitation, it is how the product works.
5. You must be able to deliver it
Nobody funds a contract they do not believe will be delivered, because an undelivered contract never gets paid. If the order is several times the largest thing you have ever done, expect hard questions about capacity, staff and supply. That is not an insult; it is the funder protecting a position you are also standing in.
Sometimes the honest answer is to fund part of it, or to phase it.
6. The business must be registered, and on the CSD for government work
Nearly every funder lends to registered businesses only. For government contracts you will also need to be on the Central Supplier Database — that is how government verifies who it is buying from, and you cannot be awarded the work without it.
A funder needs your CSD report, which you download. It does not need your CSD login, and you should not give those credentials to anyone who asks for them. More on what we will never ask you for.
Not registered yet? We can arrange that before anything else.
7. Someone has to be paying within a sensible window
Funding costs accrue over time, so a thirty-day settlement and a six-month one are priced very differently on the same order. If your buyer is a government department, the honest question is not whether they will pay but when — and that is public information. In the quarter to September 2025 there were 92,223 invoices sitting unpaid past the thirty-day deadline across the provincial administrations, worth R12.1 billion.
Check your buyer’s payment record before you price the job.
Find out in a minute, with no details
The eligibility check runs on exactly the conditions above. It needs no contact details, leaves no mark on your credit record, and it will tell you no, with the reason, if the answer is no.
Not sure whether yours clears it?
Send us the order and the buyer. We will tell you honestly, before you send anything else.