Document library
The debt schedule, and why it quietly sets your pricing
A debt schedule lists every loan, lease, advance and card the business owes. Underwriters check it against your bank debits, and an omission ends files.
A business debt schedule is one page listing every dollar the business owes and what it costs each month. It is the least glamorous document in any funding file and one of the two or three that decide your answer, because it is the page where the underwriter tests whether you are being straight with them.
The reason is simple. Every debt on the list also appears as a repeating debit in your bank statements. The underwriter already has the statements. They are not asking you to reveal the debt, they are asking you to describe it, and then they compare your description to what they can already see.
Who asks for it and when
Nearly everybody, at different depths. A merchant cash advance funder asks for open positions rather than a formal schedule, and they ask early, usually the same hour they see a daily debit in your statements. Banks, SBA lenders, and equipment lessors want the full schedule on a form, signed and dated, during the stipulation stage.
It also gets used against your request in a way most owners do not expect. The schedule determines your existing debt service, which is subtracted from your cash flow before anyone calculates what new payment you can carry. Two businesses with identical revenue can receive offers that differ by a hundred thousand dollars purely because of what is already on this page.
What an underwriter reads on it
- Total monthly debt service, converted to a common unit. A $180 daily payment is not $180. It is roughly $3,900 a month, because advances typically debit on business days only, about twenty two per month. Underwriters convert everything to monthly before they add it up, and so should you.
- Position order, and who filed first. The lender in first position has priority on the collateral. If somebody already holds a blanket UCC-1 financing statement on all business assets, the next lender is being asked to take second position, which changes both the appetite and the price.
- Daily and weekly payers specifically. These are flagged separately from monthly debt, because they hit cash flow differently. One monthly loan payment of $3,900 is manageable. The same $3,900 taken $180 at a time every morning removes the float that most small businesses actually run on.
- Maturities landing inside the new term. A balloon or a lease ending in fourteen months on a five year request is not a problem, it is a question: what replaces it, and does the payment go up when it does.
- Collateral overlap and cross collateralization. If an equipment lender holds the trucks and a working capital lender holds everything, there may be nothing unencumbered left to secure the new facility.
- Anything on the schedule that is not in the statements, and anything in the statements that is not on the schedule. Both directions matter. Debt you listed but never pay may be in default. Debt you pay but never listed is the problem described below.
The chart shows why a single small advance can block a much larger deal. The equipment loan and the line of credit together cost about $3,740 a month. One advance at $180 a day costs more than both combined, and it is the one most owners describe as small because they think about it in daily terms rather than monthly.
There is a second reason to take the conversion seriously. Frequency changes risk, not just arithmetic. A monthly payment can be made on the day the big receivable clears. A daily payment has to clear on the worst day of the month as well as the best one, which is why funders weight daily obligations more heavily than the monthly equivalent alone would suggest.
How to build one in twenty minutes
- 01Print the last three months of bank statements and mark every recurring debit
Highlighter, on paper, all three months. Anything that repeats is either debt, a lease, insurance, or a subscription. This is the fastest way to find the obligation you forgot about.
- 02Build the columns lenders expect
Creditor, original amount, current balance, payment, frequency, maturity date, interest rate or factor, collateral, and position. Nine columns, one row per obligation.
- 03Convert every payment to a monthly figure in its own column
Daily payment times twenty two. Weekly times 4.33. Show both the original frequency and the monthly equivalent, because the underwriter is going to do it anyway and you want them using your arithmetic.
- 04Get current payoff figures for anything you plan to refinance
A payoff letter from the existing lender, good through a specific date. Balances from memory are wrong roughly every time, and a consolidation priced on a wrong balance falls apart at closing.
- 05Sign it, date it, and reconcile it to the balance sheet
The total on the schedule should match total liabilities on your balance sheet. If it does not, fix it before submission rather than explaining it afterward.
What a complete schedule looks like
| Creditor | Balance | Payment | Frequency | Monthly equivalent | Collateral and position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equipment lender | $96,400 | $2,140 | Monthly | $2,140 | Two trucks, titled, first |
| Community bank line | $48,000 | $1,600 | Monthly | $1,600 | Blanket UCC, first on all assets |
| Working capital advance | $41,800 | $180 | Daily | $3,960 | UCC filed, second |
| Vehicle note | $18,900 | $610 | Monthly | $610 | Van, titled, first |
| Business cards, three accounts | $27,300 | $820 | Monthly minimum | $820 | Unsecured, personally guaranteed |
| Total | $232,400 | $9,130 | Debt service before any new facility |
On $150,000 of monthly revenue, $9,130 of existing debt service is not fatal, but it is the number every new payment gets added to. If the business nets $16,000 a month in cash flow, a lender testing at a 1.25 coverage ratio can support roughly $3,700 of new monthly payment and no more. That is the entire negotiation, and it is decided on this page before anyone talks about rate.
The mistakes that cost time or pricing
- Describing a daily payer as monthly. Writing $3,960 monthly for a daily advance is technically the right total and still reads as evasive when the statements show twenty two separate debits. Show the frequency.
- Listing the funder by the wrong name. Advances are often serviced under a name that differs from the one on the debit. Use the name that appears in your bank statement so the underwriter can match them without asking.
- Forgetting equipment leases. A lease is debt for this purpose even when your accountant treats it differently. If a payment leaves every month, it belongs on the page.
- Ignoring personal debt on a guaranteed deal. Anything you personally guaranteed shows up in the global cash flow analysis. Read how business and personal debt are combined before you decide what is relevant.
- Using the schedule to hide a consolidation plan. If you intend to pay off two advances with the new money, say so on the page and attach the payoff letters. It usually improves the file rather than weakening it. See how consolidation is underwritten.
What we do with this
Exp Capital Solutions is a broker, not a lender. We do not approve files and we do not price them. What we do is build the schedule with you from the actual bank debits, convert everything to monthly, and calculate what your file realistically supports before it goes anywhere. If the honest answer is that your existing positions have to be cleared before new money makes sense, we say that, even when the smaller deal pays us less than the one you asked for.