Although billions of dollars in funding have already been distributed through the Paycheck Protection Program, many business owners who have applied have yet to hear back about the status of their application and whether they will be funded. If you’re one of them, you might be feeling stressed as you try to manage your bills and running your business without funding. If you’re still waiting to hear back about your application, here are some tips for what to do.
Make Sure You Fully Completed the Application and Submitted Enough Documentation
Completing your Paycheck Protection Program application incorrectly—such as not filling out signatures or other fields—can delay the process for weeks. If you haven’t heard back from your PPP lender, check over your application and be sure you filled it out completely and correctly.
Missing documentation can also delay your PPP loan application. For First Draw loans, you will need to provide proof of payroll and a bank statement to qualify, and for Second Draw Loans you will need more documentation, including proof of lost revenue. Check out our guide here to everything your application should include. If there’s anything you are missing, gather it now to send to your lender.
Get in Touch with Your Lender
If you need to provide extra documentation or realized you filled out your application wrong, contact your lender directly. Contacting the Small Business Administration (SBA), the government agency that administers the PPP, won’t help, since lenders are responsible for managing individual loan applications.
Most lenders, including our PPP partners Bluevine and Funding Circle, are reachable via email and phone for any questions you might have. You should be able to reach them and correct any issues with your application, which will speed up processing and get you approved faster.
Be Patient
The truth is, lenders are overwhelmed with applications. If you’ve checked over everything and made sure your application was done correctly, your best bet is to wait to hear from your lender. It may take them a few weeks to get back to you, because programs on the scale of the PPP take time to manage.
If you haven’t heard back yet, it doesn’t mean you won’t receive funding—you probably just applied at the same time as hundreds if not thousands of other business owners around the country. The good news is that there is still plenty of funding left in the PPP pot—about $100 billion has been distributed as of the SBA’s latest report, and in total the program has $284 billion to give.
If you haven’t applied yet, it’s also not too late to get in an application with one of our partners like Bluevine.
You can follow along with the latest PPP news and track funding distribution in the Skip App, and we will keep you updated as the program continues to progress.
