The MCA document checklist to build before you call anyone

Most owners come to this conversation with a balance in their head and almost nothing on paper. They know roughly what comes out each day and roughly what is left, and the rest lives in a drawer, an inbox, or a broker's portal they no longer have the login for.

That is the reason files stall. Not the negotiation, not the funder, not the industry. Paperwork.

Spend one evening assembling the following and you will have done the part that actually moves things. Every item below has a reason attached, because a checklist without reasons is just chores.

Every agreement, including the ones that replaced other agreements

Start here, and be complete. Renewals and refinances count, and they are the ones people forget.

When an advance is renewed, the remaining balance on the old one is usually paid off out of the new funding. So a $90,000 renewal can put $31,000 in your account. If you only kept the newest contract, your paperwork says you were funded $90,000 and your bank says $31,000, and you cannot explain the gap. The old agreement explains it.

Inside each contract, find and mark eight things:

• The purchased amount, meaning what you owe in total
• The purchase price, meaning what they sent
• The specified percentage of receivables
• The reconciliation paragraph and how to invoke it
• Events of default, especially anything about changing bank or processing accounts
• Governing law and venue
• Any arbitration clause, which can override the venue clause entirely
• The personal guarantee and any confession of judgment signed at closing

Those eight determine what is available to you. Everything else in the document is boilerplate.

Three to six months of business bank statements

Not the online balance view. The actual monthly PDF statements, with every line.

These do four jobs at once.

They establish real revenue. Every argument you make about affordability rests on deposits, and a funder reads statements rather than assertions.

They show what is truly leaving. Owners routinely underestimate the total. Add the debits.

They expose the ACH descriptors. Many advance debits post under an ISO or servicer name rather than the funder you signed with, which is how a business ends up believing it has three advances when it has five.

They record the returns. Return codes carry meaning: R01 is insufficient funds, R08 is a stop payment, and R29 is a corporate account holder asserting the entry was not authorized. That history shapes how a funder frames the file.

One thing worth knowing while you read them. The error resolution rights most people have heard of come from Regulation E, and 12 CFR 1005.2(b)(1) defines a covered account as one established primarily for personal, family or household purposes. A business operating account is not covered. Your statement is the record, so keep it.

Processor statements if any advance takes a split

If a funder takes its share through your card processor rather than by ACH, pull the processor's monthly statements too.

They show the actual holdback percentage applied, which sometimes differs from the contract. They show gross volume against net deposits. And in a split arrangement, they are the only place the withheld amount appears at all, because your bank statement shows only what survived the split.

A UCC search from the state, not a summary from a credit report

Run this yourself at the filing office in your entity's state of organization. It is usually free and it takes fifteen minutes.

Print each filing showing the secured party, the filing date, the filing number, the collateral description, and the lapse date. You need the filing date order, because first to file sets priority, and priority tells you who has the strongest hand and who has the most reason to negotiate.

You may also find filings from funders you never took money from, or from brokers, which is a real and fixable problem.

Notices, demand letters and anything declaring default

Every letter and email, in date order. Default declarations, acceleration demands, notices of assignment or sale, and any letter directed at your customers.

Dates carry the weight here. When default was declared, whether you had requested reconciliation before that date, and whether the funder responded, together form the timeline that any later argument depends on. A reconciliation request sent two weeks before a default declaration reads very differently than one sent after.

Court paperwork, if any exists

If you have been served, this becomes the top of the pile and it changes everyone's schedule.

Pull the summons and complaint, note the case or index number, the court, the date of service, and the response deadline printed on the summons. That deadline is typically 20 to 30 days depending on the state and how service was made, and it does not move because you are negotiating with someone.

Also gather any judgment, restraining notice, information subpoena, or garnishment paperwork.

The current payment for every position, in writing

Build one table. This is the single most useful page in the file.

For a hypothetical shop, call it Ridgeline Fabrication:

Funder	Funded	Purchased amount	Balance	Payment	Position
First	$120,000	$167,400	$61,000	$1,395 daily	1st
Second	$60,000	$87,000	$52,200	$725 daily	2nd
Third	$40,000	$59,600	$47,700	$1,192 weekly	3rd

The daily positions come to $2,120, or roughly $44,520 across 21 business days. Add the weekly position at about $5,160 a month and the total is close to $49,700. Against monthly deposits of $186,000, advances are consuming about 27 percent of gross revenue.

That single percentage ends more arguments than any speech about hardship. Get payoff figures in writing from each funder so the balances are theirs, not yours.

An honest monthly operating picture

Six lines, one month, from the statements:

• Deposits
• Payroll and employer taxes
• Rent and insurance
• Materials or cost of goods
• Fuel, utilities and other fixed costs
• Everything left

That last line is what a realistic proposal has to fit inside. Building it before a negotiation is what separates a proposal a funder can approve from a request they cannot act on.

What the completed file tells you about your position

Each document answers a specific question, and together they answer the only one that matters, which is what you can credibly ask for.

The reconciliation paragraph tells you whether a lower payment is a contract right rather than a favor. The purchased amount against your total debits tells you whether you have already overpaid a position. The funded amount against the actual wire tells you what was withheld at closing. The UCC dates tell you who stands where in line. The notices tell you whether the funder honored its own process. The court paperwork sets the calendar for everything. And the operating picture sets the ceiling.

Organize it so someone else can read it

One folder per funder, one PDF per document, file names that start with the funder and the date. A single index page listing what exists and what is missing.

Two hours of organizing here saves a week of back and forth later, and it changes the tone of every conversation you have. An owner who can produce a payoff letter in thirty seconds is treated differently than one who says they will look for it.

Start with the two that depend on other people

Request payoff letters and run the UCC search first, because both sit outside your control and both take days. Everything else you can assemble in an evening at the kitchen table.

Then look at the total. Most owners find that the number is larger than they thought and that at least one position is further along than they believed. Both facts are better known now than discovered mid-negotiation.