How we help | Funding readiness
Needing money and being ready to borrow it are different conditions.
What underwriters actually look at, what each product really costs, and how to find out what a lender will see before they see it. Nobody can promise you an approval, including us.
What a reviewer opens first: cash flow, then debt service, then the owner. Ordered by weight.
1200 x 750This page is about readiness, not acquisition
There's a sizeable industry built on the phrase "get funded." It sells optimism, charges for it up front, and routes people toward whatever product will approve them - which is almost never the product they should have taken.
We're not in that business. Borrowing while you need capital but aren't ready for it is how businesses acquire debt they can't service. The work here is making sure that when you apply, the answer is likely to be yes and the terms are ones you can live with.
What they're reading
A reviewer is answering three questions
Underwriting varies by lender and product, but the questions behind it don't. Can this business repay? Will it? And what happens if it doesn't?
Not revenue. Revenue is what you tell people at parties. Cash flow is what's left after operating costs, and whether it covers a new payment alongside everything you already owe.
Everything already being repaid. Merchant cash advances in particular can make an otherwise healthy business uninvestable, and stacked ones end the conversation.
How long, how stable, how seasonal. Two businesses with identical annual revenue underwrite differently if one is steady and the other is three good months.
P&L, balance sheet, business and often personal returns, bank statements. Whether they agree with each other matters as much as what they say.
Reviewed for most small business credit, and tied to the personal guarantee you'll probably be signing. See personal credit.
Both are frequently gating criteria applied before a human reads a word. A decline here says nothing about your business. It says you missed a box on a form you never saw.
Commercial file, liens, judgments, and whether the entity is in good standing with its state. See business credit.
Relative emphasis, not published weightings. Every lender runs its own model, and the order shifts by product. What's consistent is that cash flow sits at the top and almost nothing rescues a file that fails there.
The vocabulary
Know these before someone uses them on you
| Product | What it is | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Term loan | A fixed amount repaid over a fixed period. | Predictable, and usually the cheapest thing a qualifying business can get. Start here. |
| Line of credit | A limit you draw against and repay, paying interest on what's drawn. | Suits working capital and timing gaps. Badly suited to long-term assets. |
| SBA 7(a) | A loan from a participating lender, partly guaranteed by the SBA. Maximum $5 million. | SBA does not lend directly. The lender decides. Documentation-heavy and slower, often with better terms as the trade. |
| Equipment financing | Secured by the asset being bought. | Often available earlier than unsecured credit, because the collateral does the work. |
| Merchant cash advance | Not a loan. A purchase of future receivables, priced with a factor rate, repaid daily or weekly. | Converted to an annualized cost, pricing is frequently many multiples of conventional credit. Read the next section before signing one. |
SBA figures from SBA's own 7(a) page, which states plainly that SBA does not provide 7(a) loans directly to borrowers.
Do this before you sign anything
A factor rate is not an interest rate
This is the calculation that costs people the most, because a factor rate of 1.4 sounds like 40% and isn't. Here's the arithmetic, worked out, on a deal structured the way these usually are.
Example: $50,000 advance at a 1.4 factor rate, repaid over 6 months
And that understates it. Because repayment starts immediately and comes out daily or weekly, you never have use of the full $50,000 for the full period. The effective annualized cost of a short-term advance structured this way is routinely well above the simple doubling above.
Ask any funder for the total dollar amount you will repay and the repayment period. Then divide the cost by what you actually received, and scale it to a year. If they won't help you do that arithmetic, or they keep steering you back to the daily payment amount, you've learned what you needed to know about the offer.
None of this makes an advance always wrong. There are situations where speed genuinely matters more than price. What's wrong is taking one without knowing what it costs, and then taking a second to service the first. Stacked advances are the single most common reason a business arrives here with a problem that can no longer be fixed with financing.
Preparation
What readiness actually consists of
Get the books into a defensible state
Current, reconciled, and consistent with your tax returns. Most declines owners describe as mysterious are perfectly legible once someone reads the financials.
Know your own numbers cold
Monthly revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, existing debt payments, current cushion. An owner who can't answer these in a meeting has already answered a different question.
Clean up what underwriting will see
State good standing, open liens, personal credit, and inconsistencies between how the business appears in different records.
Decide what the money is for, specifically
"Growth" is not a use of funds. It is a feeling. An amount, a purpose, and a mechanism by which the purpose generates the repayment is a use of funds.
Match yourself to lenders you actually qualify for
Published criteria exist. Reading them first is cheaper than being declined and then taking whatever calls you afterwards.
Assemble the package once
Statements, returns, bank statements, entity documents, debt schedule, use-of-funds summary. One folder, ready to send.
Corrections
Five things that cost business owners money
"Apply everywhere and take the best offer."
Shotgunning generates inquiries, leaves a pattern every later reviewer can see, and attracts exactly the lenders with the loosest standards and the worst pricing. They're the ones who say yes to scattered applicants, and they know why.
"Revenue is what gets me approved."
Cash flow is. A business with strong revenue and no margin, or heavy existing debt service, declines while a smaller, cleaner operation approves.
"The SBA will lend me the money."
SBA guarantees part of a loan a participating lender makes. It doesn't lend directly under 7(a), and the guarantee doesn't remove the lender's own standards.
"Business credit means no personal guarantee."
Eventually, for some products, maybe. Early on, assume you're signing one. That makes your personal credit and personal balance sheet part of a business credit decision.
"I'll take the advance now and refinance later."
The advance itself frequently makes you unqualifiable for the cheaper product you planned to refinance into. That's how the stacking cycle starts.
Where we come in
We get the file ready, then you apply
Hands-on work on the picture a lender will see, not a referral to someone else.
What we do with you
- Review what underwriting will actually see, before anyone sees it.
- Identify what's weak in the picture and sequence the fixes.
- Build the debt schedule and the use-of-funds summary.
- Get the documentation into one organized package.
- Work through whether the product being considered fits the purpose.
- Price-check an offer you've been given, including the factor-rate arithmetic above.
- Tell you which lenders' published criteria you actually meet.
Including when the answer is wait
- Sometimes the honest conclusion is that the business shouldn't borrow yet.
- That's a legitimate outcome, not a failed engagement.
- Six months of cleaner books often changes both the approval odds and the price.
- We'd rather say it now than help you sign something expensive.
- If the real problem is cash flow rather than capital, that's a different page.
| What people ask for | Straight answer |
|---|---|
| Tell me how I'll look to a lender | Yes, and in detail, before you apply. |
| Get my documentation in order | Yes. This is most of the work. |
| Check an offer I've already got | Yes. Bring the term sheet. |
| Tell me if I should wait | Yes, and sometimes that's the answer. |
| Guarantee approval, an amount, or a rate | No. Lenders decide using their own underwriting. Nobody outside that process controls it. |
| Tell me what I'll qualify for before you see anything | No. A number quoted before the financials is a marketing device. |
| Put stronger figures on the application | No. Application fraud is carried by the applicant. |
| Access to a lender list of guaranteed approvals | No. That isn't a thing. |
Related
If this wasn't quite your situation
Questions
What people actually ask
Can you get me funded?
No, and that isn't a modest way of saying yes. Lenders approve, decline, and price credit using their own underwriting standards. Nobody outside that process controls the outcome.
What is controllable is whether your financials, documentation, credit profile, and story are in a state a reviewer can say yes to. That's the work, and it's worth doing before you apply rather than after a decline.
How much can my business qualify for?
Unanswerable in advance, and a number offered before anyone has seen your financials is a marketing device rather than an estimate.
Capacity depends on revenue, margins, existing debt service, time in business, industry, collateral, and the specific lender's appetite that quarter. A realistic planning range sometimes emerges once the financials are organized, and that's an estimate about your business rather than an offer.
Does the SBA lend money directly?
Not under the 7(a) program. SBA guarantees a portion of a loan made by a participating lender, and its own page states plainly that it does not provide 7(a) loans directly to borrowers. You apply through a lender and that lender makes the credit decision.
The maximum 7(a) loan amount is $5 million. Eligibility includes operating for profit, being located in the US, meeting SBA size standards, being creditworthy with a reasonable ability to repay, and being unable to obtain the credit on reasonable terms elsewhere.
Will I have to sign a personal guarantee?
For most small business credit, assume yes. A personal guarantee makes you personally liable if the business can't pay.
That's why your personal credit and your personal balance sheet stay part of a business credit decision far longer than owners expect, and why we treat personal and business credit as one job rather than two.
Is a merchant cash advance ever the right call?
Occasionally, when speed genuinely matters more than price and the use of funds generates a return fast enough to outrun the cost. That's a narrow set of circumstances.
What's rarely right is taking one without computing the real cost, and what's almost never right is taking a second to service the first. Stacked advances are the most common reason a business arrives with a problem financing can no longer solve.
I was declined and nobody told me why. Can you find out?
Often, yes, by reading what the lender read. Most declines that feel mysterious are legible once someone goes through the financials, the debt schedule, and the public records the way an underwriter would.
Common culprits: existing debt service, books that don't agree with the returns, a lien nobody knew about, the entity not being in good standing, or a gating criterion like time in business that was never going to be met.
Sources
Check our work
Program facts come from the agency that runs the program. The free counseling below is genuinely free and badly underused.
Educational content only. NCC does not provide legal advice of any kind. NCC is not a lender, a broker of record, or an underwriter, and does not make or influence credit decisions. Nothing here is a commitment to lend or an offer of credit. The worked example is illustrative; your actual cost depends on your terms.
Thinking about borrowing, or holding an offer you don't trust?
Either is the right moment for this conversation. Bring the term sheet if you have one. The version of this call that happens after three declines and a stacked advance is a much harder one.