Filling in a business debt schedule honestly, and why the honest version helps you

A debt schedule is a single table listing every obligation the business carries. Lender, original amount, date taken, current balance, payment, frequency, rate or cost, maturity, collateral, guarantor, and status. Most lenders supply their own template; the columns barely differ.

The form takes twenty minutes. What people get wrong is not the arithmetic.

Everything goes on it

The instinct is to list the bank loan and the equipment lease and stop. Include all of this:

• Term loans and lines of credit, bank and non-bank, drawn and undrawn.
• Merchant cash advances and revenue-based financing. These are not loans and some templates do not have a row for them. Add one. Show the purchased amount, the amount funded, the remittance and its frequency, and the estimated remaining balance.
• Equipment leases and equipment finance agreements, including anything with a dollar buyout at the end.
• Business credit cards and charge cards, with the balance and the minimum payment.
• Vendor financing and extended supplier terms where there is a written agreement.
• SBA loans, including disaster loans, with the current balance and payment.
• Tax payment plans. An instalment agreement with a tax authority is debt with a very senior creditor.
• Related-party and shareholder loans, and whether they are on demand.
• Factored receivables, described as what they are.
• Anything you personally guaranteed for the business, even if the borrower on paper is another entity you own.

Why the omissions do not work

Your bank statements are in the same file. A weekly debit of an identical amount to the same originator is a financing payment, and it is identified in minutes. So is a daily one. Card processing statements show a holdback or a split. A UCC search shows every UCC-1 filed against the entity, with the secured party named and the date.

So the choice is not between disclosing and concealing. It is between a schedule that matches the statements, and a schedule that does not. The first produces a pricing conversation. The second produces a credibility problem, and in the advance market it can put you in breach of the validity guarantee you signed, which is precisely the clause that makes a misstatement personally actionable.

The columns people fill in badly

What the fraction looks like when you compute it

That is $20,783 a month. Against average monthly deposits of $148,000, it is 14.0% of everything that comes through the door, before payroll, rent, inventory or tax.

The two advances alone account for $14,633 of the $20,783. This is the figure an analyst reaches in under a minute from the same rows, and it is why the conversation that follows is about consolidation rather than about a new facility.

Compute it yourself first, then compute it again with the facility you are applying for added. If the second number is uncomfortable, the application is not the problem.

The row being repaid with the new money

If part of the request is to clear an existing position, put it on the schedule rather than leaving the row out. Add a note against it: balance, payoff quote, and "to be repaid at funding from proceeds".

Three reasons. The lender is sizing the facility and needs the payoff inside it. The payoff has to be documented at closing and is usually paid directly to the holder rather than to you. And a row that quietly disappears between your schedule and your bank statements reads as an omission rather than a plan.

Get a written payoff quote with a good-through date for every row you intend to clear. Quotes on daily-remittance products expire quickly, and a stale figure short-funds the payoff by the difference — which leaves a live position, a live UCC filing, and a funder who thought it had been cleared.

Check it against three sources before you send it

1. Your last three bank statements. Every recurring debit should map to a row. Anything unmapped is either a row you forgot or something you should be able to explain.
2. A UCC search on your entity in your state of formation and your state of operation. Filings from paid-off deals often sit there un-terminated, and a stale filing you have not chased will come back as a stipulation asking for a termination or a subordination. Finding it now gives you time to get it cleared.
3. Your balance sheet. The liability totals should broadly agree. Where they do not, know why.

The use of the schedule that is actually for you

Total the monthly cost of every row and divide it by average monthly deposits. That single fraction is the number a working capital underwriter reaches for, and it is the number that decides whether you get an offer, a smaller offer, or a consolidation pitch.

If it is uncomfortable, seeing it on your own spreadsheet is better than hearing it from a salesperson who is about to propose a solution that adds a row.