Displaying items by tag: SBA

“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)

A few days ago COVID Loan Tracker launched an EIDL advance tracking survey. After 96 hours, we are alarmed at the results.

Our data is showing that the SBA is not paying EIDL advances on a first come first serve basis, despite that being the bedrock of the entire program. Application numbers are sequential, and are supposed to be paid in order of application.

Please submit your EIDL Details Here to Help Keep the SBA Accountable
 
However, our data is showing that these are not being paid in order, with some applications made days ahead of others not being paid, while later applications are. We now have thousands of data points on this from the survey, but we can further prove this because of when we received (and did not receive) our own EIDL advances. For example, our co-founder Duncan received his EIDL advance on Monday April 27th, with application number 3301458241. However, close friends of the company who applied earlier (and have lower application numbers) have NOT been paid. So not only is crowdsourced data proving this, but there is first party proof.
 
If you have any relevant details (especially in relation to your application timeline versus Duncan’s), please fill out the EIDL survey or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin thinks $310 bn towards a new Paycheck Protection Program will be enough to satisfy remaining demand. We at COVID Loan Tracker think he is sorely mistaken.

The government and the SBA in particular have continually mentioned a figure of around 1 million applications that were in-process but stranded by the first round of the program running out of money. Based on that calculation, the logic for the size of the new program is very simple: if $349 bn funded 1.7 million applications in the first round, then surely $310 bn will fund the remaining 1 million applications that got stranded.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

Unfortunately, this assumption grossly underestimates the real number of stranded applications because it does not account for “shadow applications”. Many small business owners never had their applications formally submitted to the SBA for an E-Tran number because they were still collecting/correcting/submitting paperwork that was requested by their lenders. Many applicants did submit all paperwork, but because of faulty systems, their applications were never submitted. Both founders of COVID Loan Tracker had this happen to them on multiple application platforms despite applying the first day, and thousands of small businesses have shared similar stories with us.
Because of this,

COVID Loan Tracker believes there are closer to 5m stranded applications—mostly from genuine small business owners who lacked accountants and did not have perfect paperwork at-the-ready. Even counting shadow applications, there are also small business owners who simply did not apply because the money ran out so soon—meaning even more applications are forthcoming. Accordingly, we believe demand for the new round of PPP will be extremely high and that funds will be exhausted in 7-10 days.

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.

Earlier this week, the Small Business Administration released aggregate details about the amount of loans “approved” in each sector and each state for the Paycheck Protection Program. However, the document did very little to help business owners understand where their money is, says COVID Loan Tracker.

“Approved” has become a very vague term as it concerns the SBA. COVID Loan Tracker says it has received hundreds of emails from small business owners who say that they have received notices of “approval” but have then waited several days before receiving money, or still have not received it.

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 release of the data by the SBA does help gain insight into which sectors and states will ultimately receive money, the agency has been reticent to release the numbers of actual loan disbursement (i.e. money actually paid out). This figure would be much more illustrative of how the PPP loan program is proceeding.

For instance, the document does not lend any clarity to the percent of applications that have been paid. According to COVID Loan Tracker, that figure stands at just 5%, a far cry from the ~70% the SBA says has been “approved”. “Where is the money”, says one of COVID Loan Tracker’s founders, Duncan MacDonald-Korth.

We could not be more excited today, as Mark Cuban has featured COVID Loan Tracker and shared with his LinkedIn following.

COVID Loan Tracker was founded in Miami by husband and wife team Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth in order to help small business owners track when PPP loan money starts flowing and empower journalists with the data they need to hold the government accountable.

The site’s traffic jumped by 50x yesterday versus Friday and COVID Loan Tracker received an additional 4,000 survey submissions from small businesses yesterday. In total, CLT is now tracking 7,000 PPP loan applications amounting to about $3 bn in applications.

Thus far only about 4% of companies reporting have successfully received PPP Loans.

PLEASE FOLLOW MARK’S LEAD AND SHARE COVID LOAN TRACKER