The five numbers that decide your options

Before any advisor talks rate or term with you, five numbers already decided which products are realistic for your business. None of them are secret, and understanding how each one moves the outcome makes the whole process a lot less opaque — so here's what each one actually does.

1. Revenue band

Revenue is the clearest signal of repayment capacity, and several products key off it directly. Invoice factoring, for example, leans on revenue more heavily than almost any other input in our scoring — it's a product built for businesses with real receivables volume. Lower revenue bands don't disqualify you outright, but they do shift which products score highest and, for some products, whether a minimum revenue gate is cleared at all.

2. Time in business

Years in business is the input that separates "newer business" products from products that assume an operating track record. Startup financing is explicitly weighted and gated toward businesses earlier in their life; commercial real estate financing, by contrast, carries a minimum time-in-business gate because it assumes an established operating history. If you're under roughly two years old, some products simply won't surface — not as a penalty, but because they're not built for that stage.

3. Credit band

Owner credit is reviewed across nearly every product, but it's weighted differently by product. SBA and line-of-credit products weigh credit relatively heavily in our scoring; merchant cash advance weighs it the least, which is a structural reason it's often the fallback option for owners still building credit rather than the first recommendation for someone with strong credit.

4. Requested amount

The amount you ask for is checked against each product's realistic capacity — a rough ceiling and floor derived from your revenue, not a fixed number we made up. Ask for an amount well outside a product's typical range and it scores lower, even if every other input fits, because the point is to show you products you can actually get funded at, not a hypothetical maximum.

5. Purpose

What you're funding the business for is often the strongest filter of all. Equipment financing requires an equipment purchase; commercial real estate financing requires a property purchase or refinance; some products are simply built around one specific use of funds and won't rank highly — or won't qualify at all — outside it. Naming your purpose precisely is one of the easiest ways to get a sharper, faster match.

Putting the five together

Illustrative example, not a real applicant: a three-year-old business with $60K/month in revenue, good credit, and a clear equipment purchase in mind will likely see equipment financing and SBA rank near the top, because both weigh purpose and time in business favorably at that profile. Change any one of those five numbers and the ranking can shift — that's the system working as intended, not a black box. The goal is always the same: show you the real options for your actual business, in the order that's actually best for you.

Educational only — not financial, legal, or credit advice. Worked figures are illustrative examples, not calculations for a real applicant.