When your FundReadi Report says a business "clears" a category, it is making a specific claim from specific numbers. This piece explains what the categories are, where the floors come from, how the report decides whether you are above or below one, and what the ladder looks like from a brand-new business to one that banks compete for. The floors quoted here are from our partner book, the set of lenders behind the report's business rows. They are not the market's floors, and another lender may ask for more or less.
Key takeaways
- A category is a family of products that share a time-in-business floor and a revenue floor. You clear it when your business sits at or above both.
- A band that spans a floor does not clear it. Your formation date and monthly revenue let the report compare exact figures instead.
- No revenue, cards only. Every other category is sized off verified revenue and time in business.
- The report names the categories you clear today and the one to unlock next, with the gap that closes it.
What a category is
Business capital comes in families: cards, term loans, lines of credit, equipment financing, SBA loans, asset-backed and real-estate products, and a few others. Products inside a family share two requirements: how long the business has been operating, and how much revenue it verifies. Our partner book states those two figures per category, and the report reads them as floors. A floor is the lowest point at which the category becomes an option. It is not a promise that a particular product inside the category will say yes, and a cleared category is never a cleared product.
How the report decides you clear one
Your business questionnaire holds your time in business as a band (under 6 months, 6 months to 1 year, 1 to 2 years, 2 or more years) and your revenue as a band (pre-revenue, under $50K, $50K to $250K, and up). The report compares each band to the category's floor. You clear the time floor when your band starts at or above it, and the revenue floor when your band starts at or above it.
A band that spans a floor does not clear it. If a category's revenue floor is $204,000 a year and your band is $50K to $250K, the band straddles the floor, and the report will not assume you sit at the favourable end of your own band. The category renders as gated, with the gap named.
The questionnaire also asks for your formation date and your monthly revenue as exact figures. When those are present, the report compares the exact figures instead of the bands, and a business at $18,000 a month clears a $17,000 floor that its band could not. This is the single most useful thing you can do for a business analysis: enter the two exact figures.
No revenue, cards only
Business cards are the one product a business with no verifiable revenue can reach, and the decision rides on your personal file, not the business. The card category carries no time-in-business floor and no revenue floor. Everything above it does. Do you need revenue? Not for business cards. Yes for everything else; the floors are per product.
The ladder
Read from the bottom, using our partner book's floors:
- 0% business cards and lines. No business age required, no revenue required. Underwritten on your personal file.
- Equipment financing. 6 months in business and $5,000 a month in revenue. The equipment is its own collateral, which is why the floor is the lowest of the revenue products.
- Invoice factoring. 6 months operating and $10,000 a month. Fits only a business that invoices other businesses on terms, because the receivables are what is advanced against.
- Revenue-based financing. 6 months in business and $20,000 a month. Repaid as a fixed share of revenue until the advance is settled. A separate restricted program for diverse-led businesses exists with its own, higher floors; it is pending reconciliation to the partner book and the report describes it in general terms.
- Unsecured term loans, unsecured working capital and the 3 to 5 year bank term loan. 12 months in business and $17,000 a month. Working capital is the fastest and most expensive of the three; the bank term loan the slowest and cheapest.
- Lines of credit (general, revolving, interest-only and the 36-month industry-specific line) and bank and hedge-fund lines and term loans. 12 months in business and $30,000 a month. The bank and hedge-fund row carries a product-specific bar well above the category floor; clearing the category does not clear that product.
- SBA loans (7a, 504, Express). 24 months in business and $10,417 a month, about $125,000 a year, as the category floor. Our analysis emits a full SBA position only at $250,000 a year or more; that is a separate gate, covered in the SBA readiness checklist.
- Asset-backed loans. 12 months in business and $1,000,000 in annual sales. Advances against receivables, inventory, equipment or real estate.
- Real-estate products (home equity lines, cash-out refinance, portfolio financing, income-producing property loans). These carry no business floors at all. They underwrite the property and the borrower, not the business, and the report never gates them on time or revenue.
Every category above cards is sized off verified revenue and time in business. The report never sizes a product as a percentage of your revenue, and neither should anyone else.
What "verified" means
The floors are about revenue a lender can see, not revenue you can describe. Verification is bank statements (most rows ask for the last four to six months) and, for installment products, filed returns. A business under two years old with no filed returns cannot reach a business installment product until it files. Registered-agent and virtual addresses fail bank verification; use the operating address. This is why the questionnaire asks whether the business has its own bank account, and why the relationship-bank rows in your report ask you to open one first.
How the report names it
Your funding stage names the categories you clear today, in the order they appear on the ladder, and pairs each with the curated lender rows that fit it. Below that it names the next category to unlock and the gap that closes it: the months until your time band clears the floor, or the revenue between where you are and the line. When the gap is time, the action is to keep operating and update the questionnaire when the date passes. When the gap is revenue, the action is to grow it and enter the new monthly figure. Changing the questionnaire counts as a change to your file and unlocks a new analysis.
Open your funding stage and note the next category to unlock, then check whether the two exact figures in your business questionnaire are current.
This piece is education, not financial or legal advice, and nothing in it is a lender's decision or a promise about your score or an application. Credit scores in the portal are VantageScore® 3.0.