Finance & AccountingFree
Bank Loan Document Request Tracker
Restate every request in the names your own documents have, substitute for the ones that do not exist, and answer round two inside round one.
A lender's request list reads like a checklist and is not one. It is the index of a file the lender has to be able to defend later. On a 7(a) application the lender certifies that it examined whether the credit was available elsewhere and has substantiation in its own file to support that certification. On a conventional loan an examiner reads the same file. Nothing on the list is there for your benefit, which is why arguing with an item never works.
Which makes the real work translation. A 23-line list can ask for 46 separate files once the plural requests expand, and a good share of those are held under a name the requester would not recognise. An interim profit and loss is somebody's May management report. An accounts receivable aging is the collections worksheet. A closing does not stall because the borrower is slow; it stalls because nobody can tell whether what they have satisfies what was asked for.
Then the forward move, which is what collapses four rounds into one. Every document you send raises a specific next question, and those questions are predictable from the documents themselves. A profit and loss carrying an officer loan line brings a request for the note. An aging with one customer at a third of the balance brings a request for that contract. Answer them unprompted and round two arrives with three items on it instead of eleven. The covenant extractor reads the resulting agreement the same way.
Twenty-three lines, fifty-four documents
Harkwell Brick and Supply, a fictional masonry supply distributor, applied for 1.4 million to buy out a retiring partner and refinance a line. The request list ran to 23 numbered items, which expanded to 46 files once three years of returns and twelve months of statements were counted properly. Thirty of those 46 sat in a folder under a name the lender would have recognised. Ten were there under a different name. Six did not exist.
The six were the interesting ones. No debt schedule, so one was built from the three loan agreements and two equipment leases behind it. No interim balance sheet, so the trial balance went out with a mapping to balance sheet lines. No accounts payable aging, so the open-invoice register sorted by date. A lapsed certificate of good standing, ordered and disclosed with its reinstatement date rather than left blank. A budget with no written assumptions, so a one-page memo naming the volume, price and margin drivers.
The last of the six was not a missing document at all. Harkwell had answered the affiliate item as none. Its minority investor held a veto over the annual budget and over hiring the general manager, and SBA treats negative control as control unless the blocking right exists solely to protect a minority investment. A budget veto is not that. Declared, the size test counts 55 employees rather than 34. Round one went out with 54 documents; round two asked for three.
How it works
Read the request list
Every numbered line, including the ones buried in an email thread rather than the formal checklist
Match your own files
Each line mapped to a document by its real name, with the plural requests expanded into a count
Substitute the gaps
For anything you do not hold, the closest real document plus a written note explaining it
Answer round two
The follow-up each document invites, answered in the same package rather than three weeks later
What it does
- Restates every request in the document names you actually use, so nothing gets sent twice
- Expands plural requests into a real file count, because 23 lines is rarely 23 documents
- Proposes a substitute plus the written explanation for every item you do not hold
- Predicts the follow-up each document will trigger and answers the ones you can answer now
- Tests the affiliate question against the control definition rather than against your org chart
- Tracks owner, status and date sent per line, so the chase list is always current
Common questions
We sent everything on the list. Why does the lender keep asking for more?
Because the list was the opening index of a file, not its contents. A lender has to substantiate its own credit decision in its own file, so each document you send resolves one question and raises the next. Four rounds is the normal result of answering only what was asked. One round is what happens when you answer what the answer will raise.
What do we do about an item we genuinely do not have?
Send the closest real document plus one written paragraph saying what it is, why the requested item does not exist, and how the substitute covers the same ground. A company with no debt schedule sends the underlying notes and a summary built from them. What you must not do is leave the line blank, because silence reads as unwillingness and starts another round.
Is the affiliate question really worth this much attention?
It is the one item where borrowers answer wrongly rather than late. 13 CFR 121.103 makes control the test, not ownership, and it counts negative control: a minority veto in a shareholder agreement can create an affiliate. Affiliates are then added to you for the size test, so the answer can decide eligibility. Read the agreement, not the org chart.
Does any of this apply to a conventional bank loan?
It applies for the same reason. Even on a guaranteed loan the rules require prudent commercial credit analysis consistent with what the lender does on its non-guaranteed loans, so the file is built the same way. The FDIC examination manual expects complete and current credit files on each borrower and treats thin documentation as a finding.
How can it know what the follow-up request will be?
By reading what you are about to send the way a credit analyst will. An officer loan on the balance sheet needs a note behind it. A concentrated aging needs the contract. A margin that moved needs a reason. These are not guesses, they are the questions the document itself opens, and most of them can be closed from paper already in the building.
Does it fill in the forms for us?
No, and it should not. Signed forms and certifications are yours. What it produces is the tracker, the restated request list, the substitute proposals and the written explanations, so the only thing left is signature and assembly. If the loan closes, the covenant reporting pack picks up from there.
We are already on round three. Is it too late to use this?
No, and round three is where it pays best, because by then you know the lender's actual vocabulary. Restate what is still open, substitute the gaps and pre-empt what round four would have asked. Afterwards the annual credit review brief and the headroom forecast keep the same file current. A covenant already breached moves to the covenant waiver request pack instead.
Bank Loan Document Request Tracker
Fill in the form and your workspace opens with the work already underway.