Displaying items by tag: small business

“While PPP has gotten the bulk of media attention, millions of small business owners are just as upset about EIDL Advance payments”, says Duncan MacDonald-Korth, co-creator of COVID Loan Tracker. “The problem was so bad that we decided to build a tracking tool to help small business owners understand where their application stood”.

COVID Loan Tracker, which started last month to help small business owners find out when and where PPP money was flowing, says that the SBA has not been paying EIDL Advances on the “first come first serve” basis that they promised. “We have mountains of evidence showing that the SBA is not paying these in the order they were received”.

EIDL Advances were supposed to be $10,000 paid to each applicant within three business days. Fast forward around seven weeks and most have still not received it, and those who do only get $1,000 per employee.

As a response, COVID Loan Tracker has built a tracking tool that helps small business owners see where they are in the SBA’s process. In particular, it shows whether others who applied at the same time have been paid, or if those who applied later have been paid ahead of you.

Find the tracker here

Instructions for the EIDL Advance Tracker:
1. Fill out the survey
2. Refresh the page
3. Enter your application number into the tracker and it will automatically show results (note: you may have to wait 10 seconds or so for the tracker to reflect your survey submission)

(New York)

PPP has been nothing short of a disaster. Big companies gobbled up all the money first, leaving small businesses without the capital they needed to survive. Those big businesses then had the rules changed so that the capital is no longer attractive. By the time that small businesses could really access money, the terms around forgiveness have grown so uncertain that many don’t even want it, according to COVID Loan Tracker, a site that tracks PPP loan disbursement. Now, for those who have already accepted a loan there is a new problem—workers don’t want to be hired back. In many cases workers are getting more on unemployment than they are from being re-hired, and coupled with the fact that many can’t find childcare right now, it makes little economic sense to return to work. This has very bad ramifications for small business owners, as if they cannot rehire their workers, then the forgive-ability of their loans is seriously in question.

FINSUM: This program has been full of mismanagement and unintended consequences, and businesses all over the country are feeling the brunt.

COVID Loan Tracker was founded by small business owners to help fellow entrepreneurs understand when their PPP and EIDL loans will be paid. The SBA has provided very poor leadership and information, and the need for real data about when loans are actually being disbursed has never been higher. Please help yourself and fellow small business owners by filling out our survey so we can all understand when we will get our loans.

FILL OUT THE SURVEY TO HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

The SBA has been very short on details throughout the Paycheck Protection Program. While they have released “approval” numbers, there is no data on how many loans have actually been disbursed. If you are a small business owner, approval means nothing and disbursement means everything—you cannot pay employees with an approval, you need cash. With that min mind, COVID Loan Tracker has launched live stats which track the disbursement rate of PPP loans right on its home page.

You can instantly see what percent of loans have been disbursed, the median processing time, the total volume of loans processed, the median size of loan, the median employees of successful applicants and more. For a deeper dive, view the DATA page, which includes more in-depth charting.

And if you still need to apply for PPP, you can do it here.

One of the key challenges small businesses have faced in this process is not having all the documentation needed to process the PPP application. In fact, CovidLoanTracker.com sees it here through their PPP application: so far only about 50% of businesses who begin the application process actually complete it.

The number one reason for this? They don’t have everything they need.

CNBC has reported the same issue:

“A lack of preparation is one of the most common mistakes that owners made when applying for PPP loans during the first round, says Rob Scott, Great Lakes regional administrator for the SBA.”

So, what exactly do you need to have ready? Here’s a helpful checklist, but let’s break-it-down and try to keep it simple:

• Driver’s license: front & back photos/scans for every person who owns 20% of more of the company

• All the company formation documents you can get hold of: certificate of registration, any operating agreements, anything that gets to how the company was formed and is structured legally

• Tax returns: at least two if not three years of tax returns beginning most importantly with the 2019 return

• Payroll is the and most important trickiest part. So here’s what you should try to get from your payroll service provider:

The last twelve full months of payroll, and then calculate the “average monthly” payroll from that. BUT - some banks are actually asking for that monthly average to be calculated from the calendar year 2019. Our advice? Do both! Have as much ready as possible.

IMPORTANT: what are payroll costs? some small business owners are confused. It’s everything, INCLUDING 401(k) and health insurance contributions (including employer contributions). Quite simply: salary, wage, commission and tips, vacation, medical, parental and sick pay. It ALSO includes payment for group healthcare benefits, including insurance premiums paid. All costs in there. Even payroll taxes!

Mortgage, rent, utility documents, etc: your big ongoing expenses

Proof your business is in good standing

Proof the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted your business

Finally, and often overlooked, check your business credit file and make sure it’s up to date and correct. About 25% of companies have found their business credit files are inaccurate, A good place to check is through Nav.

Preparation is most of the battle - and having all your documents in order and ready-to-go will help you nail the PPP application process.

Let us know how your process goes or if we missed important items that you discover you needed.

All the buzz in the small business world today is about Congress’ new PPP funding package. The $484 bn deal gives $310 bn to helping small businesses as part of a continuation of the Paycheck Protection Program. It also sets aside some of that money to be processed specifically through small banks.

COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand when PPP and EIDL advance money starts flowing. The site works by crowdsourcing knowledge on applications and loan disbursements. Our goal is to help the small business community and empower journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

While the deal may be a sigh of relief to small business owners waiting for money, it does not go nearly far enough. Firstly, on the positive side, it does give billions of Dollars to be processed through small banks, which clearly did a great job the first time around. COVID Loan Tracker’s stats show that 82% of all successful PPP money was processed by small banks.

However, the new program does not allocate money specifically to companies of a certain size, which means the free-for-all of “first come first serve” will continue to disadvantage small companies. Bigger small businesses (up to 500 employees) have extensive accounting staff and sterling paperwork, which means they will once again be able to submit applications much more quickly than genuine small businesses. The program needed to have a feature which made sure “X” Dollars were allocated to genuinely small business, such as those under 25 people.

So, yet again it looks very much like the PPP won’t help the small businesses that need it most.