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By Travis Yule — CEO & Founder, Full Send Funding
Published 2022-06-02 · Updated 2026-09-30
Offers land between 80% and 150% of average monthly revenue, capped at $10 million. The spread is nearly double, and where you land is mostly not luck.
In one sentence: A funding offer is the smallest of three independently computed numbers — the 80%-150% revenue ceiling, an affordability cap solved backwards from the payment the account can carry, and the published program limits — and on most files the one that binds is cash flow rather than revenue.
Most revenue-based funding offers land between 80% and 150% of average monthly revenue, capped at $10 million. A business depositing $40,000 a month can typically expect offers in the range of $32,000 to $60,000.
That is the published rule, and every funder in this market is working some version of it. It is also not what most term sheets say, and the distance between the two is what this article is about.
The band is a ceiling, not a quote. The number an underwriter writes down is the smallest of three separate figures, computed independently, and on most files the one that binds is not the revenue one. That is why two businesses with the same deposits receive offers that are nowhere near each other, and why an offer can land below the bottom of a range the funder publishes honestly.
1. The revenue ceiling. Verifiable average monthly revenue multiplied by a figure between 0.8 and 1.5, set by what the account looks like.
2. The affordability cap. The daily remittance the account can carry, multiplied by the number of banking days in the term, divided by the factor rate. This is the one most owners have never computed, and the one that binds most often.
3. The program limits. $5,000 to $10 million on working capital, $10,000 to $2 million on our flex line of credit, and a floor of four months in business and $10,000 a month in revenue to apply at all.
Underwriting computes all three and writes down the lowest. The amount you asked for is read; it is not one of the three.
Take your average monthly revenue across the last four months, as the bank statements show it — net of transfers between your own accounts and net of any funding proceeds. Multiply by 0.8 for a conservative offer and 1.5 for a strong one.
The band itself is charted on how underwriting sizes an offer, across five revenue levels. What follows here is the arithmetic on either side of it.
Two clarifications matter before the multiplier is applied. Revenue means deposits the underwriter can verify, not what you invoiced and not what your P&L says. And average means average across the window, which is why when you apply changes what you qualify for if your business has a season.
A third is less obvious and costs people more. The mean of four months is where the ceiling starts, but a file whose months run $12,000, $150,000, $31,000 and $44,000 is not sized on its $59,250 mean. It is sized to the weakest normal month, because that is the month the remittance has to clear in — and where that switch falls is judged from the whole file rather than a fixed ratio: when the months sit close to the average the average is used, and the further the weakest sits below it, the more it takes over the sizing. Volatility does not so much move you down the 0.8–1.5 band as lower the number the band is applied to. The fourteen specific reasons an application is declined covers how that is read, and what four months of statements are actually read for covers the rest of what the window is read for.
You can run your own number with the Funding Calculator, which uses exactly this rule rather than a marketing formula. What it cannot do — and no calculator on any funder's site can — is see the next two numbers.
Here the question inverts, and this is the part that is almost never written down. Underwriting does not size an amount and then work out the payment. It sizes the payment, and the amount falls out of it.
Two tests set the payment ceiling. Neither has a published cut-off: each is judged against the rest of the file, which is why the same deposits can carry different payments on different accounts.
Remittance share is combined daily remittances — every existing position plus the one being proposed — divided by average daily deposits. The heavier it is, the more a file is sized down and priced for it, and a share the deposits cannot carry alongside what is already there is declined.
Days of cover is average daily balance divided by that same combined daily remittance: the number of banking days the account could carry the debits with nothing at all coming in. The thinner that cushion, the smaller the offer, and an account with almost none is declined.
Either can bind, and which one does tells you something. A business with strong deposits and a thin balance is caught by days of cover. A business with a healthy balance and two existing positions is caught by remittance share. An underwriter sizes to whichever limit arrives first — and sizes to a comfortable cushion rather than down to the point at which the file would decline, for a reason worth stating plainly: an offer written at the exact edge of what the arithmetic permits has no room for the week the arithmetic did not anticipate, and that week arrives.
Once the daily room is fixed, the rest is one line.
Amount funded = (daily room × banking days in the term) ÷ factor rate.
Twenty-one banking days a month is the working figure. The factor rate is the multiplier that fixes total cost at signing: our cost of capital runs from 4.5% to 45% depending on qualifications and term length, and it is a total cost on the amount funded rather than an annual rate. A 1.20 factor is a 20% cost of capital whether it is collected over four months or over two years.
Read that line again and notice what it says. Daily room is a rate — dollars per banking day, whatever schedule the payment is collected on. The amount is that rate multiplied by the length of the term and then discounted by the factor. Stretch the term and the same account supports a materially larger advance, because the same dollars per day are collected on more days.
Terms run from four months to three years. That is not a detail settled at the end of a negotiation. On a file where the affordability cap is binding, it is the single largest determinant of the number, and two businesses with identical statements, identical balances and identical existing positions can be approved for amounts that differ by a factor of two without either number being wrong.
It costs something, and the cost sits in the same formula. A longer term carries a higher factor, so more total dollars are paid for the larger amount. That is a statement about how an offer is PRICED at the term sheet — a shorter term buys a lower factor on a smaller amount, a longer term a higher factor on a bigger one. It is not a statement about what happens after signing, where the payback is fixed and the daily remittance on this file is the same $257 either way. Which is right is set by what the money is for, not by which number is bigger.
We fund $5,000 to $10 million in working capital, and our flex line of credit, on which each draw is priced as its own advance, runs from $10,000 to $2 million. The floor binds far more often than the ceiling: a business at the $10,000-a-month minimum has a revenue ceiling of $8,000 to $15,000, so the $5,000 floor is genuinely reachable, while $10 million divided by 1.5 is about $6.7 million a month of deposits, which is a different conversation from this one.
The other limits are entry rather than sizing — four or more months in business, $10,000 a month in revenue, a business bank account — and the edges of who qualifies are set out separately.
Product choice belongs here too, because it changes the affordability question rather than answering it. A line is underwritten on the same account arithmetic, but you pay only on what you draw: on our flex line each draw is its own advance, so its remittance is sized against that draw and not the limit. A line against a lump sum works through when each one fits.
A distributor deposits $312,000 across four months of statements. Netting out $34,000 of transfers between its own accounts and a $40,000 advance that funded in month two leaves $238,000 of verifiable revenue, or $59,500 a month.
Number one, the revenue ceiling. $59,500 × 0.8 is $47,600 and $59,500 × 1.5 is $89,250. Eighteen deposits a month, two negative days across four months — both explained by a single collision with a quarterly insurance debit — and a flat-to-rising trend put this file in the upper half of the band rather than the lower. Call the ceiling $89,250.
Number two, the affordability cap. $59,500 a month across 21 banking days is $2,833 a day of deposits. Reading this file whole — the balance, the trend, the one explained collision — underwriting puts the most the account can carry at $567 a day of total remittance: a full load rather than a comfortable one, so the file is priced for the pressure it is carrying. That figure is this file's, read from everything above, and not a rule; another account with the same deposits could carry more or less. The existing advance already takes $310 a banking day, which is about $6,510 a month, so $257 a day is what is left for anything new.
Now the term decides the amount. Over a nine-month term — 189 banking days — $257 a day is $48,573 of collections, and at a 1.28 factor that supports about $37,900 of funding. Over an eighteen-month term — 378 banking days — the same $257 a day is $97,146, and at a 1.35 factor it supports about $72,000.
Check the second figure against the other test before believing it. The proposed $257 plus the existing $310 is $567 a day against an average daily balance of about $9,000, which is 15.9 banking days of cover, a deep cushion for that load. Remittance share is what binds this file, not the balance.
So the revenue ceiling says $89,250. The affordability cap says $37,900 at nine months and $72,000 at eighteen. The program limits say anything from $5,000 to $10 million. The offer is the smallest of the three, which is $37,900 or $72,000 depending entirely on a term that has not been discussed yet.
Take the $310 a day out and the whole picture moves. Daily room goes from $257 to the full $567. Over nine months that is $107,163 of collections, which at a 1.28 factor supports about $83,700 — still under the revenue ceiling, so it stands. Over eighteen months it is $214,326, which at a 1.35 factor supports $158,760 — well above the $89,250 revenue ceiling, so the revenue ceiling becomes the binding number and the answer is $89,250.
That is the sentence worth taking away. Retiring one position on this file did not merely raise the offer. It changed which constraint the business is up against, from cash flow to revenue, and those two constraints have completely different levers. A business working on the wrong one gets nowhere, which is why "how do I get a bigger offer" is the wrong first question and "which number is holding me down" is the right one.
Doing this properly means retiring a position rather than adding beside it — what stacking actually costs, and when consolidation genuinely helps rather than renaming the problem.
Change exactly one input. Same $59,500 a month, same $310 a day already committed, but an average daily balance of $4,000 instead of $9,000.
At the full $567 a day of combined remittance the account would hold about seven banking days of cover, a thin cushion for a daily debit of that size. So days of cover binds first, and it binds at a lower number: on a $4,000 balance, underwriting puts the account's total capacity at $400 a day, and the existing $310 leaves $90 a day. That $400 is 14% of the $2,833 a day this account deposits, so remittance share is nowhere near binding here — the balance is.
Over the same eighteen-month term, $90 a day across 378 banking days is $34,020 of collections, which at a 1.35 factor supports about $25,200.
$72,000 against $25,200. Same revenue, same existing position, same term, same factor. The only difference is $5,000 of average daily balance, and on this file that $5,000 is worth about $46,800 of funding.
That is the honest answer to "why did the business down the road with my revenue get three times what I got". It is almost never credit and it is almost never negotiation. It is the money that sits in the account between deposits — the one number most owners have never computed, and the one that most often sets the size of an offer.
You can do this from your own statements, before you apply, in about five minutes.
If the affordability cap is the larger number, the revenue ceiling is binding you, and the levers are deposit volume and legibility: run every dollar of revenue through the business account, stop moving money between your own accounts, and let the window fill. Negotiation will not move it, because a ceiling is not a negotiating position.
If the affordability cap is the smaller number, cash flow is binding you, and there are three levers in descending order of effect — retire an existing position, lengthen the term, build the average daily balance. The first is usually the largest and the third is usually the fastest.
If your balance is thin relative to your deposits, run the days-of-cover check as well. Average daily balance divided by combined daily remittance: if the answer is days rather than weeks, that is the test that will actually set your number, and no amount of revenue growth changes it.
One caution, because this is an estimate and not a quote. It uses a factor you are guessing at, an average you have computed differently from the way an underwriter will, and a daily capacity you have judged yourself. It gives you the shape of your file. The fourteen specific reasons an application is declined covers what happens when one of these comes in badly rather than merely low.
Everything above answers what you can have. It says nothing about what you should take, and the two are unrelated.
Three ways, depending on what the money is for.
A timing gap. Build a thirteen-week cash flow forecast and read its low point — the lowest projected balance, the week it happens and how long it lasts. The requirement is the floor you never want to go below, less that low point. How to build a thirteen-week forecast and read its low point is written out in full, and the working capital requirement calculator sizes the same gap from your cycle if you would rather not build the sheet.
A purchase. The invoice, plus freight and tax, plus what it costs to run the thing until it earns. The last part is what gets left out.
A growth step. Revenue that arrives after the cash goes out, which is a larger number than most owners expect — why growth consumes cash faster than it produces it has the arithmetic.
Write the number down before you apply, with a sentence beside it saying what it does and what it returns. "Working capital" is not an answer. "The materials for the Henderson job, which pays in sixty days" is.
Take the remittance the offer implies and set it against your worst normal week of the last year — not your average week.
On a $60,000 advance at a 1.32 factor over a twelve-month term, total payback is $79,200 and the daily remittance is $314 across 252 banking days, which is $1,571 in a five-day week. Against an average week of $9,524 — that is $40,000 a month across 4.2 weeks — the remittance is 16.5% and comfortable. Against a worst normal week of $6,200, it is 25.3%, and 25.3% of a slow week is where an account goes negative.
If it does not clear in the worst week, the amount is wrong regardless of what was approved. The cadence matters here too, because the same total can land as one weekly debit or five daily ones: daily against weekly is a cash-timing decision rather than a price decision. Daily payments are available on request, but they are not our preferred payment method.
Every additional dollar arrives with a remittance attached, and that remittance is what you live with for the term — through the slow week you have not had yet.
Taking less than offered, clearing it cleanly and renewing produces more total capital across two years than maximising the first advance, because the second file is priced off performance rather than inference. The completed cycle is worth more than the extra dollars on the first advance. How renewals actually price, including the part where the outstanding balance rolls into the new agreement, is a decision of its own and worth reading before the first advance rather than after it.
This is the mirror error, and it is discussed far less.
A contractor depositing $38,000 a month who needs $80,000 of materials to start a job and accepts $45,000 has not half-started the job. The materials are not bought, the work does not begin, and the remittance is entirely real: $45,000 at a 1.30 factor over a twelve-month term is $58,500 of payback at about $232 a banking day — 13% of a $1,810 banking day, a light share — for a year, against nothing. Note where the shortfall came from: 1.5 times $38,000 is $57,000, so the revenue ceiling was already under the need before affordability was reached at all.
Half a bridge is not a bridge. If an offer lands materially under the need number, the questions are whether a longer term closes the gap, whether a different structure does — mobilization capital and purchase order financing are sized against the contract rather than against the account — or whether the job is the wrong job. Accepting a number that cannot do the work is the one outcome with no upside at all.
The amount you request is barely an input. It is read, but it does not enter the arithmetic. What it tells an underwriter is whether you have run the numbers: a business depositing $59,500 a month and asking for $250,000 has said something about itself that has nothing to do with its creditworthiness.
Your affordability cap is computed before anyone reads your explanation. The statements come first and the narrative second, which is exactly why an explanation offered up front is worth so much more than the same explanation extracted on a call two days later.
Existing positions are visible whether or not they are disclosed. A funder's debit has a fingerprint — a fixed amount, banking days only, an ACH originator that appears on thousands of files. The affordability cap is computed on the true total either way. The only thing non-disclosure changes is what the file is about.
Your renewal is being priced at the same time as your first advance. The first amount is a position in a sequence rather than a one-off, and a cleanly completed cycle is the strongest single input a second file can have.
The funder who offered you more is not seeing a different business. They are applying different judgments to the same arithmetic — sizing to the edge of what the account can carry rather than to a comfortable cushion, or assuming a term you have not agreed to. A larger offer is a real product with a real consequence, and it is worth asking which of the two numbers moved to produce it.
And here is what we cannot see. Your pipeline. Your pricing. Whether the customer producing 60% of your deposits has just told you they are leaving, or that they are doubling. The statements are backward-looking by construction, and four months of slope is the only evidence about the future that the statements contain. Everything you know about the next four months is information we do not have, which is why the application asks and why an underwriter calls.
The 0.8–1.5× rule prices revenue-based funding. It is not the only shape of money available, and sometimes the right answer is elsewhere.
It cannot tell you your number. Two of the three constraints depend on figures nobody outside your bank account can see — your average daily balance and your true existing debt service — and the third depends on a factor rate set from the file. Anyone publishing a number for you without those has guessed at them.
It is also not a pre-qualification. Checking what you would qualify for is a soft credit pull only and leaves no mark on your score, but reading an article is not that, and nothing here is an offer.
What it can do is say which questions have real answers and who holds them. Your affordability cap is answerable in five minutes from your own statements. Your need number is answerable by you, or by your bookkeeper or accountant, and it should be answered before you apply rather than after an offer arrives. The revenue ceiling is answerable by the calculator. Only your position inside the band — the thing the table near the top of this article describes — requires somebody to read the file.
Qualification is four months in business and $10,000 a month in revenue, with a soft credit pull only, a decision within 24 business hours and, on deals up to $2 million, funding within 24 hours of approval, which is one to three business days end to end. On deals up to $2 million, 90% of complete applications that meet our requirements are approved, which is a high rate rather than a promise — a file whose combined remittances the account cannot carry gets a smaller offer or an honest decline. No collateral is required on anything we fund in house. On deals up to $2 million, we file no UCC-1 lien against the funded business and our agreements contain no confession of judgment.
Apply once and underwriting prices every structure you qualify for, or see exactly what it is reading first. If you are already carrying a position and want to know which constraint is binding you before you apply, call 518-312-0382 and ask. There is no product being sold in that conversation.
The worked example nets $312,000 of deposits down to $238,000 of verifiable revenue over four months, or $59,500 a month, and applies the published 0.8x and 1.5x bounds to reach $47,600 to $89,250; the position inside the band is then read from the account as the firm's underwriters read it. The affordability figures run the same rule backwards from the payment on 21 banking days a month, using daily capacities stated for the example rather than published cut-offs — the firm publishes none for either test, because each is judged against the whole file — so that $257 a day of room supports about $37,900 over nine months at a 1.28 factor and about $72,000 over eighteen at a 1.35. The band-factor table is the firm's own practice. Every figure is the firm's rule applied, not a survey.
In revenue-based funding, most offers land between 80% and 150% of average monthly revenue, capped at $10 million. A business depositing $40,000 a month can typically expect $32,000 to $60,000. Revenue here means deposits an underwriter can verify across the last four months, net of transfers between your own accounts and net of any funding proceeds.
Within the 0.8×–1.5× band, the biggest levers upward are a strong average daily balance, deposits spread through the month rather than concentrated, a rising trend, no existing positions, a clean overdraft record and a completed prior cycle. The biggest levers downward are existing debt service, a thin balance relative to revenue, negative days in a monthly pattern, revenue concentrated in one customer, and very short operating history.
Usually because of the account rather than the business. Revenue is the entry ticket; the constraint is whether the resulting remittance fits under the cash actually available between deposits in a normal-to-slow week. Two businesses with identical monthly revenue routinely receive very different offers, and the difference is almost always average daily balance and existing debt service — both of which are improvable.
$10,000 a month, alongside four months in business and a business bank account. The revenue test is applied to an average across the window, which smooths a slow month or two — useful if the business is seasonal. Checking your options uses a soft credit pull only and leaves no mark on your score.
Usually not. Every additional dollar arrives with a remittance attached, and that remittance is what you live with for the term, through the slow week you have not had yet. Two tests: run the remittance against your worst normal week from the last year rather than your average week, and be able to say in one sentence what the money does and what it returns. "Working capital" is not an answer.
Yes, and taking less now often produces more capital in total. A cleanly completed cycle typically produces a larger amount, a lower factor or a longer term on renewal, because the funder is now pricing evidence rather than inference. Owners who complete a modest first advance generally end up with better capital than owners who maximise it.
Average monthly deposits across the last four statements, multiplied by a factor between 0.8 and 1.5 that underwriting sets from the account’s behaviour, then reduced by existing debt service and capped at what the average daily balance can support. Our calculator applies the same published rule rather than a marketing formula.
Sometimes it does. When the purchase is a physical asset, we arrange equipment financing through a direct lending partner; what we fund in house is working capital, which can pay for equipment too. A recurring and unpredictable need suits a line of credit: ours is a flex line from $10,000 to $2 million that charges only for what you draw, each draw priced as its own advance. And where the real constraint is a slow receivable rather than a lack of capital, shortening the collection cycle is cheaper than financing it.
Directly, and more than anything else once cash flow is the binding constraint. Underwriting fixes a daily remittance the account can carry, and the amount funded is that daily figure multiplied by the banking days in the term and divided by the factor rate. At 21 banking days a month, $257 a day of room supports about $37,900 over a nine-month term at a 1.28 factor and about $72,000 over an eighteen-month term at a 1.35 factor — same business, same statements. Terms run from four months to three years, and the longer term carries a higher factor, so the larger amount costs more in total dollars.
Usually because they are applying different judgments to the same arithmetic, not because they see a different business. We size to a comfortable cushion of balance rather than down to the point at which a file would decline, and we keep combined remittances at a share the deposits can carry rather than pricing past it. A funder sizing to that edge, or assuming a longer term than you have agreed to, produces a bigger number and a bigger payment. It is worth asking which of the two moved, because a larger offer is a real product with a real consequence in the first slow week.
Take average monthly deposits net of transfers between your own accounts, divide by 21 banking days, and decide how much of that the account could hand over every banking day and still get through a slow week. Subtract every existing daily remittance. Multiply what is left by the banking days in the term you want and divide by a factor of about 1.3. If that number is larger than 1.5 times your monthly revenue, revenue is the constraint and the levers are deposit volume and legibility. If it is smaller, cash flow is the constraint and the levers are retiring a position, lengthening the term and building the average daily balance. It gives you the shape of your file, not your offer.
It can be a worse mistake than taking too much. A contractor depositing $38,000 a month who needs $80,000 of materials and accepts $45,000 has not half-started the job — the materials are not bought and the work does not begin, but the remittance is entirely real: $45,000 at a 1.30 factor over a twelve-month term is $58,500 of payback at about $232 a banking day, which is 13% of a banking day's receipts, for a year, against nothing. If an offer lands materially under the need number, ask whether a longer term closes it, whether a structure sized against the contract rather than the account fits better, or whether the job is the wrong job.
Travis Yule worked in business funding before starting Full Send Funding in 2021, and has more than five years in business funding in all. He leads the company from Middle Grove, New York, and writes about working capital from the underwriting side of the table — what the numbers actually have to say before a business gets funded.