News that an HMRC crackdown on small businesses has led to a threefold increase in revenue from compliance investigations over the last year puts a spotlight on cashflow management and the role of invoice finance.

That managing capital and maintaining cashflow remain major challenges for small businesses – late payments are a particularly troublesome area – is hardly a surprise revelation, but the new figures on HMRC compliance investigations and the rise in revenue from these activities, from £434 million in 2011-12 to £565 million in 2012-13, underline the pressure these companies continue to face.

Given the difficulty in accessing SME finance, a tougher approach from the taxman and the call for additional payments comes at a hugely inconvenient time. Affected by this activity or not, SME owners could be forgiven for looking at the government as giving with one hand (the multiple SME finance schemes) and taking away with the other.

With the extra pressure on finances comes the need for flexible, inexpensive and transparent SME finance, which is why the new data highlights the advantages of invoice finance and other alternative finance products.

Over the last few years, traditional lenders have been criticised for not providing small businesses with enough manoeuvrability to deal with unexpected demands on capital, such as payments resulting from HMRC compliance investigations. Hence the rise of invoice finance, peer-to-peer lending and similar alternative small business lending facilities to bridge this gap.

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