Do I get a disclosure sheet before I sign business financing?

It depends on where your business is, how large the deal is, and who is funding it.

Where a sheet is required

Eleven states had commercial financing disclosure regimes in force as of 2026: New York State, California, Utah, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Connecticut, Kansas, Missouri, Texas and Louisiana.

Two of them require an annual percentage rate. New York State's Article 8 and the Department of Financial Services regulation 23 NYCRR 600 prescribe an OFFER SUMMARY form carrying an estimated APR, delivered as a separate document and signed by you. California requires an APR on offers of $500,000 or less. The other nine give you dollar figures — funds provided, funds disbursed, total repayment, total cost, payment terms, prepayment — and no rate.

When it arrives

This distinction matters more than most people expect. New York, California, Virginia and Connecticut tie disclosure to the moment a specific offer is extended, while you are still deciding. Florida, Kansas, Missouri and Louisiana tie it to consummation or closing.

A total cost figure handed to you with a pen in your hand is worth much less than the same figure a week earlier. Ask for the numbers by email while you are still shopping, whatever the statute requires.

When you get nothing

Above the state's ceiling. New York State exempts individual transactions over $2.5 million; Utah over $1 million; Texas covers transactions under $1 million; California, Virginia, Florida, Kansas and Missouri stop at $500,000.

If the funder is a bank. Depository institutions are exempt across these regimes and disclose under their own supervisory rules instead.

If the provider is below the volume threshold. Most of these laws exempt someone doing five or fewer transactions a year in the state.

And in the other thirty-nine states plus the District of Columbia, where no such law exists.

What to ask for regardless

1. Total amount of financing, and the amount that actually lands in your account.
2. Total you will repay, and the total dollar cost.
3. Payment amount and frequency, and how a variable payment is calculated.
4. Expected duration, and the revenue assumption that produced it.
5. What happens if revenue falls short.
6. Whether early payoff reduces the cost.
7. What the broker is paid, by whom, out of what.

Seven answers by email. That is the whole thing, and a funder who supplies them is behaving like the disclosure states expect. One who will not has told you what you needed to know.

Federal law will not fill the gap: the Truth in Lending Act covers consumer credit, and the CFPB's Dodd-Frank § 1071 rule is a lender reporting obligation, not a disclosure you receive, with a compliance date now standing at 1 January 2028. Check the CFPB's page for the current position.

Which state's law applies to your deal

These regimes generally key to where the recipient's business is located rather than to where the funder sits, and several say so expressly. A choice-of-law clause naming a different state does not automatically displace a disclosure duty owed under the law of yours — but how far that holds turns on the particular statute's wording and on the law a court applies, so treat it as a reason to ask rather than a settled answer.

The practical version: if your business is in a disclosure state and no sheet arrived, ask the funder in writing which statute it thinks governs and why. The answer is informative whichever way it goes.

The dollar ceiling is a cliff, not a slope

Illustrative only — a California business taking $499,000 is inside the $500,000 ceiling and gets a disclosure with an APR on it. The same business taking $520,000 is outside and gets nothing.

Worth knowing when a funder proposes rounding an amount up. Crossing the ceiling costs you the disclosure as well as committing you to the extra money, and the two are worth weighing together.

What the disclosed numbers let you compute

The sheet matters because four of its fields together answer the question a factor rate cannot.

Illustrative only — total financing amount $100,000, disbursement $94,500 after fees, total repayment $132,000, estimated 220 daily payments of $600.

• Cost against money actually received: $132,000 − $94,500 = $37,500, which is 39.7% of the $94,500 that reached you.
• Duration: 220 business days is roughly 10.5 months, or 0.87 of a year.
• On a simple annual basis against the amount disbursed, 39.7% over 0.87 years is about 45.5% — and materially higher against a declining balance, because you do not hold $94,500 for ten months.

None of that is available from "1.32 factor". All of it is available from the sheet.

Read the estimated APR as an estimate

In the two states that require one, the APR is computed on an assumed repayment period, because a sales-based product has no fixed one. A longer assumed term spreads the same fixed cost over more time and produces a lower estimated APR.

So check the assumed number of payments against your own deposit history. If the sheet assumes a slower repayment than your revenue will produce, you will repay faster than estimated, the same dollars will be compressed into less time, and your real annualised cost will be higher than the figure printed. The estimate is not wrong; the assumption underneath it was.

How to tell you have the real form

In the states that prescribe one, the disclosure is a separate document in a set format that the provider may not alter or add to, given when a specific offer is extended, and signed by you. So:

• It arrives on its own, not as a schedule inside the agreement.
• It carries no marketing text, no logo-heavy layout and no extra fields the statute does not authorise.
• It is dated at the offer, not at closing.
• You sign it separately from everything else.

A "disclosure" that is a paragraph inside the contract, handed over with the rest of the pack, is not the thing the statute describes.

This is general information and not legal advice for your situation.