Which funding products does this apply to?

Working Capital, Term Loan, Business Line of Credit, SBA Loan, Asset-Based Lending. 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 A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it.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.

P&L and balance sheet a lender will believe

Producing a P&L and balance sheet a lender will actually believe

Internal statements are accepted at most tiers. They are also tested against three other documents, and that is where most of them fall over.

By Find Me Funders research desk Updated 14 September 2026 1027 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.

Below the bank-credit tier, nobody is asking for audited accounts. Internally prepared statements are normal and acceptable. What is not acceptable is a set of statements that contradicts the bank statements, the tax return and the debt schedule sitting next to them in the same file.

An underwriter does not verify your financials by trusting them. They verify by tying them to documents you did not prepare.

The four tie-outs that get run

Cash on the balance sheet to the bank statements.The cash line at period end should reconcile to the closing balances on the accounts you disclosed, allowing for outstanding cheques and deposits in transit. A balance sheet showing cash you cannot find in a statement raises the question of which account is missing.

Revenue on the P&L to deposits.These will not match exactly, and they are not supposed to. Cash-basis versus accrual timing, card settlement lag, sales tax collected, refunds and chargebacks all create gaps. A consistent, explainable gap is fine. Revenue on the P&L materially above deposits invites the question of where the money went; revenue well below deposits invites the question of what those deposits were.

Debt on the balance sheet to the debt schedule and to the statements.Every loan, lease, advance and card balance on the schedule should appear in liabilities, and the payments should appear as debits. A balance sheet with no long-term debt and a statement showing weekly withdrawals of an identical amount is a contradiction, and it is the contradiction underwriters find most often.

Last year's closing balance sheet to the tax return.Retained earnings, the depreciation schedule and the balance sheet on the return (Schedule L, where the entity files one) should roll forward into the interim statements. If your accountant made year-end adjustments your bookkeeping file never absorbed, your interim statements start from numbers the return does not recognise.

What makes an internal statement look prepared rather than dumped

A header that says what it is. Legal entity name, the statement type, the basis (cash or accrual), the exact period, and the date produced. "P&L January to August 2026, accrual basis, prepared 3 September 2026" answers three questions before they are asked.
A comparative column. Same period last year, or the prior full year. It shows you know your own trend and it removes a request.
A balance sheet that balances. Obvious, and it fails more often than you would expect once an interim period is pulled from a live file.
No catch-all account carrying a real number. Uncategorised income, suspense, miscellaneous. Clear those before you export.
Cost of goods separated from operating expense. Gross margin is one of the first ratios calculated. If everything sits in one bucket, the analyst builds their own version and it will be less favourable than yours.
Owner compensation visible. Not buried across three accounts. It is the largest single add-back in most small-business credit analysis and hiding it does not help you.

Add-backs: how to present them without looking like you are inflating

Cash flow available to service debt is not net profit. Analysts add back interest, depreciation, amortisation, and then argue with you about the rest: owner salary above or below a market replacement wage, personal expenses run through the business, one-time legal costs, a lease that ends, a related-party rent above market.

Present these in a separate schedule, not inside the P&L. One line per item, the amount, and one sentence of why it recurs or does not. Attach evidence for the big ones — the settlement agreement for the one-time legal bill, the terminated lease. An add-back with a document behind it usually survives. An add-back asserted in an email usually does not.

Illustrative only —net profit of $48,000, interest of $9,200, depreciation of $16,500, owner compensation of $145,000 against a market replacement wage of $95,000, and a one-time legal settlement cost of $11,000. Annual debt service including the new loan is $70,000.

Cash flow available comes to $48,000 + $9,200 + $16,500 + $50,000 + $11,000, or $134,700. Against $70,000 of debt service that is coverage of 1.92.

Now remove the owner compensation add-back, which is the one an analyst will argue about, because $95,000 is a judgement rather than a fact. Coverage falls to 1.21 — under a 1.25 test, on the same file, with nothing changed but an opinion about what a replacement manager would cost.

That is why a replacement wage is worth documenting rather than asserting. A job posting for the equivalent role, a published survey figure, or what you actually paid a general manager before you took the job yourself: any of them turns the largest add-back in the file from a claim into evidence.

Do not add back something that will happen again next year. Every experienced analyst has a list of the add-backs that get claimed and removed, and claiming three of them costs you credibility on the two that were real.

Accrual or cash

If you file on cash basis and run your books on cash basis, say so and stay consistent. Accrual gives a better picture of a business with receivables and payables, and lenders at the bank tier generally prefer it, but a hastily converted accrual statement that does not tie to anything is worse than a clean cash-basis one. If you convert, convert the comparative period too.

What to fix before you send

Print your own P&L and balance sheet, put your last bank statement and your debt schedule beside them, and run the four tie-outs yourself. Where a number does not tie, write the one-sentence explanation and attach it. You will spend an hour. It saves the two or three rounds of stipulation questions that otherwise arrive one at a time, each with a queue in front of it.

And if you cannot produce a current balance sheet at all, that is worth knowing about yourself before a lender discovers it. Several products — invoice factoring, asset-based facilities, real lines of credit — are priced on the quality of your reporting as much as on the numbers in it.