What a lender will actually fund on any business — no finance background, no CPA, no guesswork.
Type in the asking price and the cash flow. It tells you what a bank will actually fund against that business, and what your return would be if you bought it.
Change any input and everything updates live. Bookmark this page — you'll want it on the next listing too, and it will still be in your account.
SBA lenders size the loan so cash flow covers the payment by a margin (the DSCR, typically 1.25–1.30x on the most recent year), after a market manager salary and using only documented add-backs. Prime is currently 6.75%; the 7(a) ceiling on loans over $350K is Prime + 3.00%. A standby seller note is excluded from the coverage test, so it can bridge a gap above the financeable ceiling.
The number above is what the business can support. What you can borrow depends on your down payment, your credit, and your background — and only a lender can tell you that.
Book fifteen minutes with me. I'll run your actual numbers, and introduce you to the SBA lenders I work with so you can get a pre-qualification letter. Free, no obligation.
Book a 15-minute call →Straight to my calendar. No form, no sales pitch.
Asking price is $2.4M? That deal is $396,368 above the ceiling — and your cash-on-cash return drops from 42% to 15%, because every dollar over comes out of your pocket instead of the bank's.
None of that means you're bad at this. It means you're missing one number.
A lender doesn't care what the seller thinks the business is worth. They start with cash flow, subtract what it costs to pay a manager, and divide by a coverage ratio. Whatever's left is what they'll lend.
So you don't say "I think you're overpriced" and listen to the seller say "no I'm not." You say: here's what a bank will fund against your cash flow, and it's four hundred thousand less than you're asking. That's not an opinion. It ends the conversation.
Why I built this. I'm Arthur Kwok, an M&A advisor with Transworld Business Advisors of Austin–Waco. I work with dozens of SBA lenders across different banks, every week.
And the same thing kills more deals than anything else: a buyer and a seller shake hands on a price the bank was never going to fund. Nobody finds out until six weeks into diligence, after the buyer has paid for a QoE and taken time off work.
The lender's number is the one that decides whether a deal happens. You may as well know it on day one instead of week six. That's all this does.
That's who it's built for. Two inputs, plain English, no finance background needed.
No. This tells you what a lender would fund against the business's cash flow. What you can personally borrow is a separate question, and there's a link inside if you want help with that part.
No. It opens right here on the page and you never have to talk to me. I'm a broker — sellers pay me, not buyers.
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