Which funding products does this apply to?

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 A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it.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

Reconcile your books to the bank before an underwriter does it

Reconciling your books to the bank before an underwriter does it for you

Every analyst who reads your financials runs a version of this check. Running it yourself first is three hours that removes an entire category of question.

By Find Me Funders research desk Updated 14 September 2026 1036 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.

An underwriter does not verify your financial statements by trusting them. They verify by tying them to a document you did not produce, and the first of those documents is always the bank statement. The cash line on your balance sheet either agrees with the statements or it does not, and if it does not, everything above it on the page becomes a question.

Doing the reconciliation yourself is not about tidiness. It is about finding the three or four discrepancies that are sitting in your file right now, deciding what they are, and either fixing them or writing the sentence that explains them — before the sentence has to be written under pressure in reply to a stipulation.

The mechanic

A reconciliation proves that two records of the same cash agree once you account for timing and for items only one side knows about. It runs in two columns and both columns have to land on the same number.

The book side.Start with the cash balance in your accounting file at period end. Subtract anything the bank charged that you have not recorded — account fees, wire fees, returned-item fees, processing charges debited directly. Add anything the bank credited that you have not recorded — interest, a refunded fee. The result is the adjusted book balance, and these adjustments are real journal entries you now have to post.

The bank side.Start with the closing balance printed on the statement. Add deposits in transit — money you recorded as received but that had not cleared by the statement date. Subtract outstanding cheques and payments — issued but not yet presented. The result is the adjusted bank balance.

The two adjusted figures must be equal. If they are not, something is wrong in the detail, and the difference is the size of the error.

A worked reconciliation

Illustrative only —one operating account at month end.

Cash per the accounting file: 48,312.40
Bank charges debited but not recorded: 64.50
A customer cheque returned unpaid, not yet recorded: 105.00
Interest credited, not recorded: 3.10

Adjusted book balance: 48,312.40 − 64.50 − 105.00 + 3.10 = 48,146.00

Closing balance on the statement: 47,794.35
Deposits in transit: 6,890.00
Outstanding cheques: 2,140.00 + 865.75 + 3,120.60 + 412.00 = 6,538.35

Adjusted bank balance: 47,794.35 + 6,890.00 − 6,538.35 = 48,146.00

They agree, so the cash line is supportable. Note what the exercise surfaced along the way: a 105.00 returned customer cheque that had not been recorded, which means a receivable you thought was collected is still outstanding, and a 3,120.60 cheque that has been outstanding long enough to be worth a phone call.

What to do when it does not tie

Work in this order. The difference itself is the clue.

Is the difference equal to a single transaction on either side? Then you have a missing or duplicated entry. Search the statement for that exact amount.
Is the difference divisible by nine? That usually means transposed digits — 4,510 entered as 4,150. The difference, 360, divides by nine.
Is the difference exactly twice a transaction? A debit entered as a credit. Common with refunds and with transfers between your own accounts.
Is it the total of one day's activity? A whole day imported twice or not at all, which happens when a bank feed drops and is reconnected.
Is there an old outstanding cheque that never cleared? Anything outstanding more than six months should be investigated and, where appropriate, voided and re-recorded. State unclaimed property rules may apply to genuinely abandoned funds; the point here is that a stale outstanding item quietly corrupts every reconciliation after it.
Are there transfers between your own accounts recorded on one side only? This is the single most common cause in businesses running more than one account, and it creates a phantom deposit or a phantom payment that also distorts the revenue figure.

The three checks that go beyond cash

Reconciling the balance is the floor. Two further comparisons are what the analyst actually runs, and you should run them too.

Revenue against deposits.Total the credits on the statements for the period, strip out transfers between your own accounts, loan or advance fundings, refunds received, owner contributions and anything else that is not a sale. Compare to revenue on the P&L. They will not match. Card settlement lag, sales tax collected, accrual timing and cash sales that never reached the bank all create legitimate gaps. What matters is that the gap is consistent month to month and that you can name its components. A gap that swings from plus eleven percent to minus fourteen percent across three months is the one that gets asked about.

Debt payments against the schedule.Every recurring debit on the statement should map to a line on your debt schedule. Run down the statement and tick them off. The debits that do not tick off are the ones an underwriter will find, and an undisclosed obligation found by the lender is treated very differently from one you listed.

Payroll against the payroll reports.Net pay debits plus tax debits should equal gross payroll on the reports. A mismatch usually means an owner draw is running through the payroll line, which distorts the labour cost and the add-back analysis at once.

What to have ready before you submit

Reconcile the last three months before you send anything. For each month, keep the one-page reconciliation showing the two adjusted balances agreeing, and keep the list of outstanding items. You will not usually be asked for it. It exists so that when the analyst says the cash does not look right, you can answer in one message with the arithmetic rather than in four messages over a week.

Then write the revenue-to-deposit bridge as a short note: total credits, less transfers, less funding proceeds, less sales tax, equals the figure that should be compared to the P&L. Attach it to the package. It pre-empts the question that otherwise arrives on day three, and it signals something useful about you — that the numbers you sent are numbers you have already checked.

Where this applies