Your buyer needs a loan. Make your business loanable.
Buyers of businesses like yours usually need a lender's yes, and lender checklists quietly end sales. We sit on your side of the sale: we audit your company the way an SBA underwriter will, fix what fails, and prepare your file so the buyer's financing has a clear path.
Start free: get the loanability checklist, ten things a buyer's bank checks, two pages.
Best started 6 to 12 months before you list. Confidential, no broker required.
Drag the handle. Left is the business at audit, right is after the 90 day sprint.
Composite example with details changed. Your audit is scored from your actual books, returns, and records. Not a loan offer or a guarantee of financing.
You never hear the reason. The deal just dies.
Buyers rarely say the lender declined. They retrade, go quiet, or walk. These are the six findings behind most of it.
Addbacks that evaporate
The country club dues, the family cell phones, the salary you set yourself. Claimed addbacks without documentation get deleted in diligence, and your multiple gets applied to a smaller number.
Books that do not tie to returns
When the P&L says one thing and the tax returns say another, the underwriter believes the returns. Every dollar of gap is a dollar of value you cannot prove.
One customer too big
A top account over 20% of revenue makes lenders nervous and buyers aggressive. There are fixes, from contracts to earnout carve-outs, but only if you start early.
The owner is the business
If licenses, key relationships, and pricing authority all live in your head, the lender sees a business that leaves in your car on closing day. Transition plans are financeable. Dependence is not.
Cash sales and loose records
Revenue a lender cannot verify is revenue that does not exist at underwriting. It quietly caps your price at whatever the documents support.
A data room built in a panic
Requests trickle in, documents trickle out, weeks pass. Deal fatigue ends more sales than price does. A complete file on day one keeps buyers moving and lenders confident.
The buyer pool just got bigger. And pickier.
Since July 4, 2026, buyers can stack 7(a) and 504 loans (the business loan and the building loan) up to $10M combined, which puts businesses like yours in reach of thousands of searchers, operators, and micro PE buyers who were priced out last year. Every one of them needs a lender to say yes to you. The sellers who prepare for that are the ones who choose among offers instead of chasing one.
More financed buyers
Bigger caps mean buyers who once topped out at $5M can now pursue $8M and $10M targets. Most of your market borrows.
Underwriting is the gate
Every financed offer lives or dies on your records. The lender never meets you. Your file is the whole interview.
Time is the cheap fix
Twelve months out, most problems cost effort. Four weeks into diligence, the same problems cost price.
Loanable means liquid
A financeable business sells to more people, faster, with fewer retrades. That is what full price actually looks like.
From audit to a buyer-ready file
Loanability scorecard
Your business graded across the five categories underwriters actually score, with the specific findings behind each number.
Prioritized fix list
Every finding ranked by impact on price and closing odds, with an owner, a fix, and a timeline. No 40-page report nobody reads.
Defensible earnings file
Addbacks documented to survive a quality of earnings review. The number your multiple gets applied to, protected.
Reconciliation pack
P&L, balance sheet, and tax returns tied together with the bridges explained, so the underwriter's first question is already answered.
Complete data room
Every document a lender and a buyer will request, organized and ready before the first meeting. Diligence in days, not months.
Deal structure guidance
How price, assets, and seller note terms interact with the buyer's 7(a) and 504 stack, so you negotiate terms a lender can approve. What a seller note is, in plain English.
Audit. Fix. Package. Close.
Audit
We score your business against lender criteria and hand you the scorecard and fix list. You will know exactly where you stand.
Fix
The readiness sprint: documentation, reconciliation, addback evidence, concentration plans. We drive it with your CPA.
Prepare
Data room built, earnings file locked, structure guidance in hand. Your business now reads the way lenders lend.
Close
When offers come, we support the numbers side through diligence and the buyer's financing, to funded and done.
Asked by owners. Answered straight.
Why does SBA loanability matter if I might sell to a cash buyer?
What does the loanability audit actually check?
How long does it take to become loanable?
Will this raise my asking price?
Do you work with my CPA and broker or replace them?
The July 2026 rule change
Why your buyer pool just expanded, and why their loans got more complicated.
Other side of the tableHow buyers structure the deal
See what a prepared buyer brings. It is the standard your file will be judged against.
Selling to a group?BYOPE buyers
Repeat acquirers move fast and diligence hard. Meet them ready.
Get the loanability checklist
It is the checklist we run before a listing, so you can see what a lender will flag before any buyer does. Want the written version graded for your business? See a sample Loanability Letter.
Get a Loanability Audit
Two weeks, full confidentiality, a written scorecard. You will know what a lender would flag before any buyer does, and exactly what to fix first.
Book a Confidential CallLoanable starts with clean numbers. Twelve months of clear monthly reporting widens the buyer pool and protects your price. See the Business Accelerator, our monthly reporting service.
No obligation to list. hello@clariqadvisory.com