Your lender should guide you through the SBA loan application process. They know about all the documents you need to submit, for example, and they’ll pass that information along to you.
While your specific documentation needs may be different, you should expect to need these:
- Personal tax returns
- Business tax returns
- Articles of incorporation
- Business license
- Lease agreements
- Profit & loss statement
- Balance sheet
- Other financial statements
And you might end up needing a lot more than that.
In any case, you’ll want to get those documents (or whatever else your lender asks for) in as soon as possible.
See, the SBA loan application process notoriously takes a long time. But a lot of that time comes down to how long it takes the business owner to produce all the necessary documents. That means that you can speed up your application time a lot by being prepared and then being responsive.
Once your lender has everything they need, it will submit your application to the SBA for approval. Depending on your loan type, the SBA will turnaround your application sometime between 36 hours and 10 days. (Our guide to business loan timelines explains more.)
If all goes well, your SBA loan application will get approved, and you’ll be on your way to getting funded.