What funders actually see in your bank statements
Three months of statements decide most non-bank offers. Here are the five numbers an underwriter pulls out of them, and what you can fix before you send them.
Ask a revenue-based funder what they need and the answer is almost always the same: your last three months of business bank statements. Not a profit and loss, not a forecast.
That is because they are underwriting the account rather than the business plan. Once you know what they extract, you can look at your own statements the way they will.
The five numbers they pull out
An underwriter is not reading your statements line by line. They are extracting five figures and forming a view in about ten minutes.
- Average monthly depositsTotal money in, averaged across the three months. This sets the size of any offer.
- Number of deposits per monthMany small deposits suggests a real customer base. Two large ones suggests concentration risk.
- Negative or overdrawn daysCounted, not glanced at. A handful across three months is often enough to decline.
- Existing debits to other fundersRegular daily or weekly withdrawals are obvious, and they reveal positions you did not mention.
- Ending balance trendRising, flat or falling. Falling balances alongside strong deposits suggest the money is already committed.
They are underwriting the account, not the business plan. Which means the account is the thing to prepare.
Deposits are not revenue
This trips up more applications than anything else. A funder cares about money arriving in the account, not what your accounting software reports.
Invoiced but unpaid work does not count. Cash taken and not banked does not count. Revenue run through a second account does not count either, because they cannot see it.
All trading income landing in one business account, consistently, month after month.
Takings split between two banks, or a personal account used for business income.
What a strong three months looks like
Two businesses can bank the same total and get very different answers.
What you can fix in one cycle
None of this requires new revenue. It requires the revenue you already have to be visible and tidy.
- Consolidate takings into one accountThe single highest-impact change, and it costs nothing.
- Keep a buffer to end negative daysEven a small one. The count is what matters, not the amount.
- Bank cash promptlyMoney in the till is invisible to an underwriter.
- Clear the smallest outstanding positionReducing the number of open positions moves the needle more than reducing balances.
- Send all pages, uneditedMissing pages read as something hidden, and stall the file.
General information, not financial advice. Underwriting criteria vary by funder, product, state and business. Cashman Sam is not a bank, a lender or a broker of record, and is compensated by funding partners when a deal completes. Every application is subject to the funding partner's own underwriting.
