Sonovate
Sector specialist for UK recruitment agencies and consultancies. Sonovate funds contractor pay and client invoicing as a single embedded workflow: timesheet approval triggers contractor payment plus a back-end invoice finance facility against the client debt. Operates as software plus credit, not a pure invoice financier. Trading entity Sonovate Limited (incorporated 20 January 2011, Cardiff).
Quick routing verdict
- Product: Embedded finance and contractor pay funding for recruitment and consultancy agencies.
- Ticket band: £10k to £15m+ rolling facility.
- Decision time: 3 to 10 business days.
- Pricing: Service fee plus discount margin, quoted at offer.
- FCA-authorised.
At a glance
- Legal entity
- Sonovate Limited
- Companies House
- 07500445
- Founded
- 2013
- Product
- Embedded finance and contractor pay funding for recruitment and consultancy agencies
- Ticket range
- £10k to £15m+ rolling facility
- Decision time
- 3 to 10 business days
- Ltd-only
- Yes (FundBiz routes Ltd / LLP / partnerships of 4+ only regardless)
- Last reviewed
- 2026-05-08
Why we route here
- Built for recruitment and consultancy economics; better fit than generic IF.
- Pays contractors weekly while extending agency credit terms to clients.
- Software automates timesheets, invoicing and credit control.
- Direct lender plus platform; no separate factoring relationship.
When we route elsewhere
- Sector-locked; useless to businesses outside recruitment, consultancy or contingent labour.
- Pricing is fee plus margin, not a single APR.
- Hard credit search at full application.
- Onboarding takes longer than fintech term lenders given the operational integration.
Best fit applicants
- UK recruitment agencies
- Management consultancies billing on time-and-materials
- Contingent-labour businesses with weekly contractor pay
Where Sonovate is the wrong fit
- Product or e-commerce businesses
- Sole traders
- Borrowers wanting a single-line term loan
If declined by Sonovate
If your application to Sonovate is declined, the FundBiz post-decline matcher routes by decline reason. Common alternatives in our panel are listed in the "When we route elsewhere" section above. See also our Sonovate decline runbook for sector-specific routing detail.
Other panel lenders
- 365 Business Finance, Merchant cash advance
- Aldermore, Asset finance, invoice finance, commercial mortgages
- Allica Bank, SME term loan + commercial mortgage
- Bizcap, Specialist post-decline / fast cash
How we rate Sonovate
This review is FundBiz's own editorial assessment, scored against a published framework. See our methodology for how we rate each lender.
Run the matcher
Tell us your turnover, sector and ticket size. We score against Sonovate and the wider FundBiz panel, then surface the lenders most likely to approve. Limited companies, LLPs and partnerships of 4+ only.
Open matcher →Last reviewed: 2026-05-08. By Oliver Mackman.