Find Me Funders
True Revenue
Also called adjusted revenue, netted deposits, real deposits, scrubbed deposits.
What an underwriter concludes you actually sold, after stripping transfers, funding proceeds, refunds, redeposited items and third-party money out of your gross bank deposits.
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
Gross deposits are the starting point of bank-statement underwriting and almost never the answer. Money lands in a business account for many reasons, and only some of them are sales.
What gets removed
- Transfers in from your own other accounts, including savings and a second operating account
- Proceeds of another advance, loan or line draw
- Owner injections and shareholder loans
- Returned items redeposited, which count twice if nobody nets them
- Refunds and reversals coming back in
- Credit card batch settlements duplicated where a processor and a bank feed overlap
- Money that is not yours: sales tax collected, tips, customer deposits later refunded, and pass-through billings in an agency or brokerage model
What gets added back
Revenue landing somewhere the underwriter cannot see. A second operating account, a processor settling to a different bank, a payment app balance, or cash sales deposited irregularly. If you do not supply the statements, the revenue does not exist for pricing purposes.
What the number is used for
Average monthly true revenue drives the size of an offer, the holdback percentage and the term. It is also compared line by line against the merchant processing statement and, where supplied, the tax return.
Where this one catches people
Deliberately inflating deposits is both detectable and serious. Round-tripping — moving money out and back to raise the average — leaves matched pairs of debits and credits on the same statements, produces a deposit pattern that does not reconcile to the processing statement, and is exactly the comparison every funder runs. Where the inflated statements support a credit application, the exposure is not a declined file.
The opposite mistake is more common and quietly expensive. A business that supplies one account when revenue arrives across three is under-offered, is priced as a smaller business, and usually never learns why. Supply every account, label the transfers yourself, and provide the processing statements. An underwriter who can see the whole picture prices the whole picture; one who cannot, discounts what is missing.
Worked through
Illustrative only. One month of statements.
Gross deposits: $310,000.
Underwriter removes: inter-account transfers from the savings account, $58,000 — each matched by a debit the same day; proceeds of another advance, $75,000; returned items redeposited, $12,000; an owner injection, $9,000.
True revenue for the month: 310,000 − 58,000 − 75,000 − 12,000 − 9,000 = $156,000.
If an offer is sized against monthly revenue, the difference between $310,000 and $156,000 is not a haircut. It is the difference between the approval the merchant expected and the one that arrives — and the $75,000 of advance proceeds also told the funder there is an existing position on the file.
Figures in the example are illustrative. They show the arithmetic, not a quote — what any one lender would charge is on that lender's page, where it is published at all.
Where you will meet this term
Read next
True Revenue — common questions
What does true revenue mean?
What an underwriter concludes you actually sold, after stripping transfers, funding proceeds, refunds, redeposited items and third-party money out of your gross bank deposits.
Where does true revenue catch people out?
Deliberately inflating deposits is both detectable and serious. Round-tripping — moving money out and back to raise the average — leaves matched pairs of debits and credits on the same statements, produces a deposit pattern that does not reconcile to the processing statement, and is exactly the comparison every funder runs. Where the inflated statements support a credit application, the exposure is not a declined file.
Is true revenue the same as an interest rate?
True Revenue 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 true revenue apply to?
Merchant Cash Advance, Working Capital, Business Line of Credit, Revenue-Based Financing.
Is there a worked example of true revenue?
Yes, on this page, and it is labelled illustrative. It shows the arithmetic, not a quote from any lender.
What else should I read alongside true revenue?
Average monthly deposits, Bank statement underwriting, Deposit frequency, Deposit volume, Gross monthly deposits.
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.