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Reading a merchant’s bank statements in ten minutes

Quick answer

Check average daily balance, negative days, deposit count and consistency, existing remittances, month-to-month revenue trend, and whether the statements are complete. Those six decide almost every file, and reading them yourself before you submit is the difference between predicting a decline and discovering one.

Alex MakowskiFounder, Infinite BookingsUpdated 2026-08-302 min read

You are not underwriting the deal — the funder does that. You are predicting what they will see, so that you submit files that fund and have honest conversations about the ones that will not. Ten minutes on the statements does both.

Look atWhat good looks likeWhat kills it
Average daily balanceComfortably above the proposed daily remittanceBalance that the remittance would routinely empty
Negative daysNone, or one or two explainedSeveral a month, or a pattern across months
Deposit countFrequent and regular for the industryFew large lumps, or long gaps
Existing remittancesZero to one positionMultiple daily debits to funders
Revenue trendFlat or growingA steady decline across four months
CompletenessEvery page, bank-generatedMissing pages, screenshots, gaps

Average daily balance is the one that decides the size

Revenue tells a funder what the business does; the balance tells them whether it can survive a daily debit. A merchant doing $120,000 a month who runs a $900 average balance is a different risk from one doing $80,000 with $14,000 sitting there, and the second gets the better offer despite the smaller top line.

Spotting existing positions

Look for identical debits on every business day, usually round-ish numbers, often to names that read like ordinary companies. Merchants routinely forget or omit positions — not always dishonestly — and a position you find in the statements before submission is a conversation, while one the funder finds after is a decline and a mark against your submissions.

Completeness is your problem, not theirs

Missing pages, a skipped month or an account the merchant did not mention read to an underwriter as concealment even when they are only carelessness, and they change how the rest of the file is read. Check page numbering against the footer of each statement before you submit anything.

Questions brokers ask

Average daily balance, negative days, deposit count and consistency, existing remittances, the revenue trend across months, and whether the statements are complete. Those six decide most files.

One that comfortably absorbs the proposed daily remittance without routinely running the account to zero. It is a relationship between the balance and the payment rather than an absolute figure, and it matters more to the offer than the revenue does.

Identical debits recurring on every business day, roughly 21 or 22 times a month, often to a company name that gives nothing away. Weekly positions appear four or five times and are the ones most often missed.

It varies by funder, but a clean set is the goal and a pattern across months is usually fatal. One or two with a real explanation attached are survivable, which is a reason to provide the explanation rather than let the statement speak for itself.

Always. It costs ten minutes and it converts declines you would have discovered into declines you predicted, which is the difference between a wasted submission and an honest conversation with the merchant.

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