Applicants work through a free, independent readiness screen at home and arrive at the first meeting with a printed readiness packet — their answers organized in the order a file is usually reviewed, with the documents still to gather listed as next steps. Or skip the homework and open it together at your desk: the same report has a Lender view built for working a file side by side. Free for applicants, no account, available in English and Spanish.
This site names no lenders, never asks for a Social Security Number, and accepts no document uploads.
Add one line to your appointment email — the copy-paste blurb below works as is. The applicant works through the pre-screen at home in about 20 to 30 minutes and arrives with the printed packet, an itemized project budget, business plan and projections exports, and a tracker showing which documents are gathered and which are still open. The first meeting starts from an organized file instead of a blank notepad.
Open the pre-screen together at your desk. The report's Lender view adds an underwriting worksheet: a ranked program comparison, a repayment-capacity self-check, smart follow-up questions, possible hard stops to verify, and the loan amount to discuss. It keeps the conversation structured — and every decision stays yours.
A plain-text summary of the applicant's answers in the order a file is usually reviewed — the business, the project and its itemized budget, the amount to discuss, and a repayment self-check — followed by a comparison of the loan routes worth discussing, the items a lender will want to verify, and the questions the applicant should be ready to answer.
The packet organizes and summarizes what the applicant entered. It does not screen anyone in or out and makes no credit decision — nothing in it is a qualification, a pre-approval, or an approval. Those judgments belong to the lender.
Drop this into your appointment or follow-up email, and edit it however you like:
Before our meeting, please work through this free, independent readiness tool and bring the printed report: businessloanreadiness.com. It takes about 20-30 minutes and does not ask for your Social Security Number or any documents.
The tool is available in English and Spanish at the same address.
Short answers to the questions bank compliance teams ask first.
No. It is an independent educational tool. It is not run by, funded by, or affiliated with the U.S. Small Business Administration, any government agency, or any lender, and every page carries that disclaimer in the footer.
No. No lender pays for placement, mention, or introductions, and the site is not a referral agent — it names no lenders and steers applicants toward none. There is no advertising.
None from the readiness tools. Answers are processed in the applicant's browser and are never sent to or stored on our servers — there are no accounts, and tool entries are gone when the tab closes. The one exception is the optional feedback form: if someone writes to us, we receive only what they type there, and it never includes loan answers. Analytics is limited to page views and content-free usage counts, never answers, amounts, or results.
Never. The site shows no interest rates, payments, fees, or approval odds, and it makes no credit decisions — it explains programs and organizes information. Lending decisions belong to lenders.
No. Every result comes from a deterministic rules engine with cited public SBA sources — the same inputs always produce the same outputs, and nothing an applicant types is read or scored by AI.
SBA program rules on this site were last reviewed August 2026. They come from public SBA guidance — SOP 50 10, SBA program pages, and federal regulations — and live in one place in the code, so a figure can never be right on one page and wrong on another. Always verify against current SBA rules and your own policy before a real submission.
The site is independently built and operated from Sacramento, California. It is not run by, funded by, or affiliated with the U.S. Small Business Administration, any government agency, or any lender.
Questions about using the tool with your applicants — or anything your compliance review flags — reach us through the Help & feedback link in the footer of every page. Reported issues are checked against official sources and fixed.