Tungsten is one of a growing number of companies that position themselves between large customers and their suppliers. Their USP is that they offer early payment finance (at a cost) to help suppliers and simplify the payment process for their clients. That's ok if it is well managed but, in the case of Tungsten:
Payments are often aggregated from multiple invoices and paid after Tungsten’s fees are deducted, so suppliers receive payments that do not correspond to expected totals. Tungsten do not provide a detailed remittance advice, so you’ve no idea which invoices have been included in the payment. The only way to find out is to contact Tungsten and have them send you a spreadsheet summary. Good luck with that.
Their ticketing portal doesn’t work and they don’t answer e-mails.
They do not pay out until the money has been received from the payer. That is no different to being paid late by a customer of course, but it does add time to the process.
If you’ve signed up for early payment it is expensive (10.9%apr) and it’s hit and miss as to whether you’ll be able to use the service, so don’t rely on it.
We have a customer with whom we turnover about £300k per annum. Before they moved to Tungsten we had a 30 day account and were paid on time for every invoice. Our ledgers were accurate and trading with them was easy. Since Tungsten became involved we are on obligatory 30 day plus end of following month terms (i.e. 60 days in effect as we bill at the beginning of each month for trading in the previous month) and reconciling the account is a complete nightmare that takes hours of effort.
Furthermore, the day to day problems are becoming greater. Yesterday there was a notice on the Tungsten site saying that they were ‘unable to process invoices and payments’. You can’t open a support ticket as the link doesn’t work and they don’t answer direct e-mails.
You probably can’t avoid Tungsten because very large customers sign up with them and you’ll have no option but to accept their terms. If that does happen to your business you are in for a rough ride.