Glossary · underwriting

Qualification criteria

Also called minimum requirements, eligibility criteria, credit box, guidelines.

The published floors a funder applies before a file is properly reviewed - time in business, monthly revenue, credit score, industry, state, existing positions - which are gates rather than approvals.

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.

What it means

Every funder publishes something. The list normally covers minimum time in business, minimum monthly deposits or revenue, a minimum credit score for the owner, eligible states, and eligible industries. Some add open bankruptcy, unresolved tax liens without a payment plan, and a cap on existing positions.

Those are exclusion filters. They decide whether a human or a model looks at the file at all. Everything that actually determines the offer happens afterwards, on data the criteria do not mention: deposit consistency month to month, negative day counts and their clustering, how the existing funders' debits look against deposits, whether prior advances were paid as agreed, industry seasonality, and how the funder's own book is positioned this month.

Criteria also differ sharply by product within the same funder. An equipment finance desk and an advance desk under one roof will have almost nothing in common in what they screen for.

Where this one catches people

Meeting the published minimums gets your file read, not funded. The stated criteria are the part a funder is willing to publish precisely because they are not the part that decides. Nobody publishes deposit-consistency thresholds, negative-day tolerances or how they weight your existing positions, and those are the decision.

Where you will meet this term

Merchant Cash Advance Working Capital Term Loan Business Line of Credit Equipment Financing Invoice Financing

Read next

Monthly deposit averageTotal deposits into the operating account over the reviewed statement period divided by the number of months,… Negative daysDays within a statement period on which the operating account closed with a negative balance, counted per mon… Paper gradeThe informal tiering funders and brokers use to sort files by quality, from bank-eligible A paper down throug… PositionWhere a funder sits in the order of advances or liens against the same business - first position funded first… Pre-approvalA non-binding indication of what a funder might do based on limited information, subject to full underwriting… Restricted industryBusiness types a funder will not fund at all, maintained as an internal list keyed to industry codes and driv… Time in business (TIB)How long the business has been operating, measured by the funder from a date it can verify — usually entity f…

Qualification criteria — common questions

What does qualification criteria mean?

The published floors a funder applies before a file is properly reviewed - time in business, monthly revenue, credit score, industry, state, existing positions - which are gates rather than approvals.

Where does qualification criteria catch people out?

Meeting the published minimums gets your file read, not funded. The stated criteria are the part a funder is willing to publish precisely because they are not the part that decides. Nobody publishes deposit-consistency thresholds, negative-day tolerances or how they weight your existing positions, and those are the decision.

Is qualification criteria the same as an interest rate?

Qualification criteria is defined above; if you are comparing it against a rate, check whether the two measures share a time dimension before you put them side by side.

Which products does qualification criteria apply to?

Merchant Cash Advance, Working Capital, Term Loan, Business Line of Credit, Equipment Financing, Invoice Financing.

Is there a worked example of qualification criteria?

Not on this entry. Where a term is arithmetic, the arithmetic is shown; this one is not primarily a calculation.

What else should I read alongside qualification criteria?

Monthly deposit average, Negative days, Paper grade, Position, Pre-approval.

Has this definition been checked?

Not yet. This entry is drafted and live, and the notice at the top says so. Confirm anything you are about to act on.

Is this legal advice?

No. It is a definition. What a clause does in your contract, in your state, is a question for a lawyer licensed where you are.

Can I suggest a term?

Yes — [email protected]. The glossary grows from what people are actually shown in contracts.