As a follow-up from our article regarding the SBA announcement to preparing to provide disaster financial assistance to small businesses, we recently received word that the SBA will be training their staff on Thursday on how to process the Disaster Loan Assistance applications that will be pouring in over the next several weeks. Prior to the coronavirus, the SBA would typically take 2-3 weeks to process a Disaster Assistance Loan. With all of the businesses impacted by the coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of applicants will be flooding the SBA’s website to apply for disaster assistance. We would not be surprised if the SBA’s server crashes due to the extreme volume of applicants; the same thing happened when Obamacare was first released.
The SBA is training their staff to handle the anticipated influx of applications, however, it is not always first come first serve. Loan processing is a game of momentum, loans that can be issued more easily will most likely be processed sooner. Like any loan, the loan process will require a lot of documentation to prove the need and to substantiate the requested loan amount. If you are prepared and organized, your loan will most likely go through more easily than the person who is disorganized and unprepared. Also, the longer it takes you to respond to the SBA’s request for additional information, the less momentum you have as the SBA loan processor will have more momentum with other businesses applicants.
The SBA also announced that based on certain criteria, these loans have the ability to be completely forgiven, making this essentially free money as long as you meet specific qualifications. One of these qualifications is that your business keep employees on payroll until June, 30th 2020. To learn more about the other qualifications, a certified public accountant or someone able to assist your business in these matters will need to review the specific instances based on your business needs.
With our help, we can assist in making the process a lot cleaner to make sure you receive the financial assistance your business needs to stay afloat. If you are a small business that is concerned with being able to maintain the financial ability to stay afloat throughout this pandemic, contact LB&J today so we can walk you through ways we might be able to help.
In North Carolina, the Disaster Financial Assistance program is now open (see image below) as with many other states, so we’d recommend acting soon for the reasons addressed above.
