Which funding products does this apply to?

Merchant Cash Advance, Working Capital, Term Loan, Revenue-Based Financing. Each has its own page listing the funders in this directory that offer it and what each one publishes about its terms.

Are the figures here quotes?

No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What a particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it at all.

The Find Me Funders research desk. Some drafting is AI-assisted, and every page that is says so at the top, including whether a person has checked its claims yet.

How do I know a figure here is right?

Where a page carries the green notice, its claims were checked against the sources listed at the end and a reviewer is named. Where it carries the amber one, nobody has verified it yet and you should confirm anything you plan to act on.

Are the examples real deals?

No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What any particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it.

Why do you never say what a typical rate is?

Because we cannot source it. A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it. Where a lender publishes a figure, we show that figure and say where it came from.

Is this financial or legal advice?

No. It is general information about how these products work. Outcomes depend on your contract and your state, and a lawyer or accountant licensed where you are is the person to ask about your situation.

Can I reuse this content?

Quote a paragraph with a link back. Do not republish whole articles.

What a payoff quote includes that your balance does not

What a payoff quote includes that the balance does not

Six categories of item sit between the number on your statement and the number you have to wire, and only two of them are usually negotiable.

By Find Me Funders research desk Updated 14 September 2026 1032 words 5 min read

Drafted with AI assistance. Not yet independently checked. Nobody has verified the claims on this page against a source, so treat the figures and legal points as a starting point rather than as settled, and confirm anything you are about to act on. How we check things.

What does a payoff quote include that my balance does not?

A payoff quote is the balance plus everything that becomes due because you are ending the obligation today: per-day amounts accruing between the quote date and the funding date, fees already assessed but not yet collected, charges triggered by the payoff itself such as a wire fee or termination fee, third-party costs the contract lets the funder pass through, and any returned or unapplied items sitting in suspense. On a fixed-repayment advance it can also include the absence of a discount you assumed was coming. Expect the quote to exceed the balance, ask for the itemisation, and challenge only the items the contract does not clearly authorise.

Expect the two numbers to differ, and expect the difference to be larger than you budgeted. Your balance measures what you owe if nothing else happens. A payoff quote prices the end of the relationship on a specific day, and six categories of item live in the gap.

The six categories

Per-day accrual between quote date and funding date.Every payoff figure is quoted as of a date. If money arrives later, the difference has to be made up. On an interest-bearing loan that per-day number is small: $52,000 at a 14% annual rate accrues about $19.95 a day, so a five-day slip costs roughly $100. On a fixed-repayment advance remitting $700 per business day, the per-day figure is the remittance itself, and a five-business-day slip is $3,500. Same word, two completely different magnitudes.

Fees already assessed but never collected.Returned-payment charges, late charges and administrative charges are often booked to the account rather than debited, because debiting a fee from an account that just bounced a payment tends not to work. They surface at payoff.

Charges triggered by the payoff itself.A wire fee, a document preparation or release fee, an early termination fee or a prepayment penalty where the contract has one. On some structures there is also unearned discount that does not come off — see below.

Third-party costs passed through.Filing fees for the UCC termination, lien search costs, and, where the account has been to a lawyer, an attorneys' fees line. The contract either authorises the pass-through or it does not, and that clause is worth reading before you argue.

Returned or unapplied items.Payments that were returned and re-presented, payments applied to the wrong account, and credits sitting in suspense. These push the number in both directions and are the most common source of a genuine disagreement.

The discount you assumed.On a fixed-repayment advance the amount owed does not shrink because you pay early. There is no unearned interest to rebate, because there was never interest — there was a purchased amount and a total repayment amount set on day one. Unless the agreement contains an early payoff discount schedule, the quote is the full remaining repayment amount, and the saving from paying early is the time you get back, not money.

A worked gap

Illustrative only —a remaining balance of $50,400 on an advance remitting $700 per business day, with three returned debits earlier in the term and a file that went to outside counsel once.

Remaining balance: $50,400.00
Returned-payment fees, three at $35: $105.00
Default administration fee: $250.00
Legal cost pass-through: $900.00
Per diem to the funding date, two business days at $700: $1,400.00
Wire fee: $35.00
UCC termination filing fee: $40.00

Quote: $53,130.00. That is $2,730 over the balance, or 5.42% more.

Now sort those seven lines into three buckets. Owed and not arguable: the balance, the wire fee, the filing fee. Owed if the contract says so and the trigger actually happened: the returned-payment fees, the administration fee, the legal pass-through. Avoidable by scheduling: the $1,400 of per diem, which exists only because the wire lands two days after the quote date.

The $1,400 is the interesting one. It is the largest single add-on in the list, it is not a fee anybody negotiates, and it is entirely a function of how you sequence the closing. Get the quote good through a date you can actually hit and it disappears.

Where the gap is widest

Three structures produce an unusually large spread between balance and quote, and it is worth knowing which one you hold.

A fixed-repayment advance with no discount schedule.The gap here is not fees at all — it is the whole unearned portion of the factor rate. A business that has repaid half of an advance has not repaid half the cost; it has repaid half of a number that included all the cost from day one.

A precomputed instalment loan.Where interest is precomputed rather than simple, the rebate on early payoff follows whatever method the contract names, and some methods return far less than a straight-line calculation would suggest. Find the rebate clause and read it before you assume a saving.

An account that has been through collections.Legal pass-throughs, administration fees and default charges accumulate quietly and appear together at payoff. Ask for the dates each was assessed; a fee assessed after the account was already brought current is worth a question.

What to ask for, in order

The itemisation. Ask for the quote broken into balance, fees and per diem, with the date and contractual basis for each fee. A funder that will not itemise has given you a number you cannot check.
The contract cite for each fee. Not to be difficult — to find out whether the charge is in the fee schedule, in the default section, or nowhere.
The transaction history. Every debit and return with dates, so you can find the suspense items.
A good-through date you can hit. Five business days is usually enough. Three is tight. Two is how per diem gets added.
The number with and without the per diem, so you know exactly what a one-day slip costs before you commit to a wire date.

What to refuse

Refuse to wire against a quote with no good-through date. Refuse to net out a disputed item unilaterally — a short wire is a partial payment, the obligation survives, the lien stays, and you have now sent money without ending anything. Raise the dispute, get a revised letter, then wire the revised figure.

If a fee appears that you cannot find anywhere in the documents, ask which clause authorises it and put the question in writing. Sometimes the answer is a clause you missed. Sometimes the line comes off.

What any given charge is worth depends on the exact wording of your agreement and on the law of the state it selects, so treat the categories here as a map of where to look rather than a ruling on your own quote. This is general information, not legal advice.