Reading your offer
The four figures on an approved application, what each one means, and the questions worth asking before you accept.
3 min read
When a file is approved, the application page changes shape. The headline figure becomes the approved amount rather than the one you asked for — once there is a decision, that is the number — and a Your terms card appears underneath the tracker.
The four figures
Taking the example above:
- Amount — $55,000. What is being advanced or lent to the business. It can be less than you asked for; what an underwriter can support is what the statements support.
- Total payback — $69,300. Everything you will repay, in dollars. Not a rate you have to compound out yourself, and not a figure with fees hiding behind it: this is the number.
- Weekly payment — $1,333. What leaves the account each week.
- Payments — 52. How many of them. Multiply the two and you are back at the total payback, by design.
Above the figures is the product itself — Term loan in the example. A merchant cash advance and a term loan at the same amount are different agreements, and you are entitled to see which one you have been offered before you read the numbers.
What the numbers do not include
Nothing is left out of the total payback — that is the point of quoting it. But two things sit outside it:
- What your own bank charges you. Payment fees, if your bank has them, are between you and your bank.
- Anything you choose to pay early or late. If early repayment matters to you, ask before you sign: it varies by product and by lender, and the person who arranged it can tell you exactly.
Questions worth asking before you accept
- Who is the lender? Spark is a brokerage. We arrange the facility; a lender funds it, and the agreement is with them. Ask which lender, and ask to see the agreement.
- What is the payment schedule, exactly? Which day of the week, from which account, starting when.
- What happens if a week is bad? Every lender handles a missed payment differently, and the time to find out is now.
- Is this the right product? If you asked for working capital and were offered an advance, it is reasonable to ask what a term loan would have looked like and why this was the answer.
After you accept
The tracker moves to Funded when the money is on its way to your account. Your specialist handles the signing and the account details — an approval is not the end of the conversation, it is the start of a short one.
On the web
Everything above is on the application page: the tracker, Your terms, and Your details (what you sent us) collapsed underneath it. If there is activity on the file, a Where it's up to list sits alongside with what happened and when.
In the app
The same application screen carries the same terms card and the same tracker, and updates the moment the decision lands — pull down to refresh if you are staring at it.
