# How much can my business actually borrow?

Why the number comes from your deposits rather than your revenue, and the four things that move it up or down.

Published: 2026-09-08 · Spark

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The most common question we get is also the one with the least satisfying answer on a website: it depends on your deposits. Not your revenue, not your projections, and not what a competitor quoted you last month.

Here is how the number is actually arrived at, so you can estimate it yourself before you apply.

## It starts with deposits, not revenue

Revenue is what you invoiced. Deposits are what landed. Underwriting works from deposits because that is the money that will be there when a payment is due.

A useful starting point: most offers land between **80% and 130% of one month of average deposits**, read across the last six months. A business averaging $90,000 a month in deposits is usually looking at somewhere between $72,000 and $117,000.

That is a range, not a quote. Four things move you inside it.

## What moves the number up

**Consistency.** Six months that each look like the others is worth more than six months averaging the same amount with two of them near zero. Steady beats large.

**Deposit count.** Forty deposits a month from forty customers is a stronger file than two deposits from two customers, at the same total. Concentration is the risk nobody thinks to mention.

**Time in business.** Two years of history tells us more than seven months of it. There is no cliff, but there is a slope.

**Headroom.** What you are already paying out weekly to other funders comes off the top. This is the single biggest cause of an offer coming in lower than expected.

## What moves it down

Negative days. NSF fees. A declining trend across the six months rather than a flat or rising one. A large one-off deposit that inflates the average and is obviously not repeatable — we strip those out, and so should you when you estimate.

## The honest version

A person reads the statements. That is not a marketing line; it is why the range above is a range. Two businesses with identical averages can get different offers because one of them has a story the numbers alone do not tell — a seasonal dip that repeats every year, a single large customer who has been there a decade.

If you want the real number rather than the range, the fastest route is six months of statements and a phone call. Both take less time than reading about it.

## Getting the real number

The range above is a guide; the answer comes from your statements. When you are ready to put a file in, [giving yourself the best shot](/help/setting-yourself-up-to-be-approved) covers what moves the number and what quietly sinks a file.