Commercial loan requirements in Mandan, ND come down to a few numbers a lender may review: revenue, time in business, credit, and whether the cash the business brings in covers its loan payments with room left. This post works those numbers on an invented engineering and surveying firm. Each funding partner sets its own requirements.
An invented surveying firm asks for a GPS rover, base receiver and data collector. The post shows the numbers a lender may review, works a payment coverage figure before and after the new loan, and lists the records to gather.
Revenue, Time in Business and Credit
A request may first be sorted by three facts: how much the business brings in each year, how long it has operated, and the owner's credit. A funding partner may set minimums for each, and they differ from partner to partner.
Architectural, engineering and related services counted 14 employer establishments in Morton County in 2023, half of them with fewer than five employees (County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 5413).
Nonemployer Statistics counted 16 firms in the same group with no paid employees in the county in 2024.
For a firm that small, the owner's own credit may carry weight next to the firm's, and the request form asks for time in business and annual revenue for that reason.
A partner may count time in business from when the firm began operating under its current registration. A surveyor with years at another firm brings that experience, but the business history a partner sees is this firm's own, so the owner's background is worth stating on the first call.
Cash Flow and Existing Debt
Revenue alone does not show whether a new payment fits. A lender may compare the cash left each month before loan payments with all of the payments, old and new. The result is a coverage figure: above 1.00 the cash covers the payments, and the higher it is, the more room is left.
In this invented example, the firm has $5,140.00 a month before loan payments and already pays $689.40 on a crew pickup and $456.85 on a plotter lease. Its invented coverage today is 4.48.
The invented GPS rover, base receiver and data collector cost $27,615; over 48 months at a 9.94% annual rate, the payment is $699.59 in this invented example. With it, coverage falls to 2.78, and $3,294.16 a month is left after all three invented payments.
A partner decides what coverage it will accept, so the figure is a way to see the request as a reviewer may, not a pass mark.
Extra Records for Equipment Requests
An equipment request adds the item itself to the review. For the survey gear, that means:
- The dealer quote, listing the rover, base receiver and data collector separately
- Any yearly software or correction-service subscription shown apart from the hardware, since it is an operating cost
- Model numbers, and serial numbers once they are assigned
- What happens to the old receivers: kept as backups, sold, or traded in
If the old receivers are traded in, the dealer's trade-in credit lowers the amount to finance, and the quote should show it as its own line. Gear that goes into the field every day can also be named on the firm's insurance before delivery, since a partner may ask how the equipment is covered while it is being paid for.
The equipment financing page covers loans and leases tied to one machine, which is how gear like this may be financed.
Requirements for a Credit Line Built on Client Invoices
An engineering firm bills by the project or by the month, and clients may pay 30 to 60 days later. A line of credit can carry payroll and field costs while invoices are out, and the review for a line may lean on the receivables.
A partner may ask for an open-invoice list that shows each invoice, the client and how long it has been out. Invoices past 90 days may count for less than newer ones, or not at all, depending on the partner.
In this invented example, the firm has $31,460 of open invoices, and $4,715 of it is past 90 days. That older share is 15.0% of the invented total, and following up on it before asking for a line lifts the part of the list a partner may count.
Documents Required for a Business Loan, Listed for a Survey Firm's Request
For the survey firm in this post, the documents gathered before the request goes out are these. Having them in one folder means the first call can stay on the purpose and the amount rather than on what is missing:
- Statements from the firm's business account covering recent months
- The last two filed business tax returns, if the partner asks for them
- A year-to-date profit and loss statement
- A list of current loans and leases with each monthly payment
- The equipment quote, or the open-invoice list for a line request
- Business registration details and the owner's identification
Working capital requests use the same list without the quote; the working capital page explains that product, and the business loans page compares all of them.
By Thistlepine Capital · Updated
