Which funding products does this apply to?

Merchant Cash Advance, Working Capital, Term Loan. Each has its own page listing the funders in this directory that offer it and what each one publishes about its terms.

Are the figures here quotes?

No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What a particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it at all.

The Find Me Funders research desk. Some drafting is AI-assisted, and every page that is says so at the top, including whether a person has checked its claims yet.

How do I know a figure here is right?

Where a page carries the green notice, its claims were checked against the sources listed at the end and a reviewer is named. Where it carries the amber one, nobody has verified it yet and you should confirm anything you plan to act on.

Are the examples real deals?

No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What any particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it.

Why do you never say what a typical rate is?

Because we cannot source it. A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it. Where a lender publishes a figure, we show that figure and say where it came from.

Is this financial or legal advice?

No. It is general information about how these products work. Outcomes depend on your contract and your state, and a lawyer or accountant licensed where you are is the person to ask about your situation.

Can I reuse this content?

Quote a paragraph with a link back. Do not republish whole articles.

Should I take the first offer or shop it?

Shopping pays when your file is stable and the money has no deadline. It costs when either of those is untrue, and the cost is not the inquiries.

By Find Me Funders research desk Updated 14 September 2026 943 words 4 min read

Drafted with AI assistance. Not yet independently checked. Nobody has verified the claims on this page against a source, so treat the figures and legal points as a starting point rather than as settled, and confirm anything you are about to act on. How we check things.

Should I take the first business funding offer I receive, or shop it against other lenders first?

Shop it unless the money is against a dated commitment or your file is about to get worse. A second process typically takes days, not weeks, and on a five-figure deal the spread between a first offer and a competitive one is usually worth several thousand dollars. The two cases where you should take the first offer are a deadline whose value exceeds the likely saving, and a bank statement window about to absorb a bad month. Get the first offer in writing with an expiry date before you shop, so you are comparing against something real.

A first offer is priced against nothing. At the moment it is made, the funder has no competitor, no evidence you have alternatives, and every reason to price at the top of what your file supports. Introduce a second offer and the same file produces a different number — not because the underwriting changed, but because the pricing input changed. That is the whole structural point: on most non-bank products, a meaningful part of the price is discretionary, and discretion moves when someone is watching.

So the default is: shop. The question worth answering is when the default is wrong.

Where shopping wins

Illustrative only —$75,000 of working capital.

First offer: a factor rate of 1.30. Cost $22,500, total repayment $97,500.
After a second process: 1.24. Cost $18,000.

The saving is $4,500 for perhaps five business days and one additional submission. Expressed as an hourly rate for the owner's time, it is the best-paid work available that week.

The spread is not always that wide, and on bank and credit union paper it is usually narrower, because those prices are set by policy rather than by negotiation. But the direction is consistent: the first number is rarely the best number, and nobody volunteers the better one.

Where taking the first offer is right

Illustrative only —the money funds mobilisation on a contract worth $210,000 of revenue at a 19% margin — $39,900 of contribution. The start date is fixed, and the customer has an alternative supplier.

Ten days of shopping to save $4,500 against $39,900 at risk is not prudence. It is a bad trade dressed as diligence. Where the money has a deadline with a value attached, calculate that value first and let it cap what shopping is worth.

The second case is subtler and catches more people. Your file moves. If a month with a $4,200 negative balance episode and several NSFs is about to roll into the three-month statement window, the next offer is priced on a worse file. Suppose that moves you from 1.30 to 1.38 — $6,000 worse than the offer you turned down. You shopped, and you paid for the privilege.

The variable that flips it: whether your file is improving or decaying across the shopping window, and whether the use of funds has a dated value.Improving file, no deadline — shop, always. Decaying file or a dated commitment — take the offer and negotiate what you can inside it.

The costs of shopping, honestly

They are smaller than funders imply and larger than zero.

Credit inquiries.Most non-bank underwriting starts with a soft credit pull. A cluster of hard pulls in a short window has a modest scoring effect, and rate-shopping windows in scoring models exist for some product types.

The pattern in the file.This is the real cost. Underwriters check for recent submissions, and a file that has been in front of eight funders in two weeks reads as one that has been declined seven times. That inference is often wrong and it is priced anyway.

Time.Two to five business days for a parallel process, if you have your documents ready. Longer if you are assembling them for each application, which is its own argument for assembling them once.

The way to get the benefit without the cost is to run a small, deliberate process: two or three funders, chosen because your file fits what they do, submitted in one window with one document set, with a decision date you set in advance.

The questions that settle it

Does the use of funds have a date, and what is missing it worth in dollars? Write the number down. It caps what shopping can be worth.
Is my file better or worse next month? Check what rolls into and out of the statement window. Deposits trending up and no negative days argue for waiting a beat; the reverse argues for signing.
Do I have a written offer with an expiry date? A verbal indication is not a floor to negotiate against. Get the term sheet.
Can I run the second process in parallel rather than in series? Same documents, same week, decision on Friday. That converts a two-week delay into a three-day one.

What to ask for, and what to refuse

Ask the first funder to put the offer in writing with an expiry date, and ask what is negotiable — the fee, the term, the remittance frequency, the personal guarantee wording. Something usually is. Asking costs you nothing and occasionally moves the price without a second application at all.

Ask each funder for the same five figures so the comparison is real: amount funded, total of all payments, every fee in dollars, the payment and its frequency, and the number of months. Different structures cannot be compared on a rate.

Have your documents in one folder before you start: three months of statements, the most recent filed return, a current debt schedule, entity documents and a voided check. A complete package is what makes a parallel process possible in three days rather than three weeks.

Refuse an offer that expires in two hours. A genuine expiry is a week; a two-hour deadline is a sales technique, and the honest response is to treat the pressure itself as a data point about the counterparty. Refuse to let anyone submit your file to funders you have not named. And refuse to take a first offer without asking, plainly, what the best price is on this file — you would be surprised how often the first answer was not the last one.