Guides
The arithmetic your file will be put through.
Most finance guides are written from the lender's side: here are the products, here are the rates. These are written from the other side, and they set out what a commercial credit team actually does with your numbers once the file arrives. Free, and nothing is gated.
No form
The whole guide is on the page.
No download, no email wall, no form in front of any of it. These run long because the arithmetic takes that many words, not because a fuller version is being held back for people who hand over an address. Read them, run the numbers in the calculators they point at, and call us if you want the work done on your own figures.
By what you do
How lending actually works for a business in your sector: the earnings a credit team will adopt, the add-backs that survive, and what they are worth.
Finance for trades and construction businesses
You run a trade or construction business and want to know what it can borrow.
For builders, electricians, plumbers and landscapers: why the tax return understates what you earn, which add-backs survive an assessment, and what they are worth.
Read the guideFinance for mechanics and auto workshops
You run an auto workshop and you are buying equipment, the premises, or both.
For mechanics, panel beaters and tyre shops: buying the workshop you rent, why the ground under it matters to a lender, and what the rent you stop paying is worth.
Read the guideFinance for transport, logistics and earthmoving
You run trucks, trailers or earthmoving plant and the fleet is the business.
For operators running trucks, trailers and plant: matching the term to the working life, what a balloon commits you to, and how a fleet decides your next facility.
Read the guideFinance for hospitality, retail and fitness businesses
You run or are buying a venue, a shop or a studio, and the lease is the business.
For cafes, restaurants, gyms and salons: why the fit-out is not security, what a make good clause costs you, and how owner drawings move the earnings adopted.
Read the guideFinance for franchisees, single and multi-site
You are buying into a franchise, or you run one site and want the next.
For franchisees buying a first or second site: how the agreement term caps your loan, and why the refurbishment cycle belongs in the model before you sign.
Read the guideFinance for professional services firms
You run or are buying a firm whose main asset is its people and its client relationships.
A free professional services finance guide, no email required. Accounting, legal, broking, consulting and engineering firms borrow against something a lender cannot repossess. What that changes about the earnings, the security and the working capital, and how a credit team reads it.
Read the guideFinance for medical and allied health practices
You own, are buying into, or are buying a practice.
A free medical finance guide, no email required. General practice, dental, veterinary, physiotherapy, optometry, psychology and pharmacy borrow against earnings a credit team reads differently from any other sector. What gets adopted, what secures it, and where practice files come unstuck.
Read the guideBy the question you have
The arithmetic behind a decision, worked through end to end. Written to be used rather than skimmed.
Business finance, read from the credit side
You run or are buying a business and are about to borrow against it.
A free business finance guide, no email required. What a commercial credit team actually tests when it reads your file: the earnings it will adopt, the rate it will test at, the security it takes, and the covenants that run for the life of the facility.
Read the guideHow much cash you need behind you to start a business
You are about to start a business and want to know what it will take to survive it.
The setup costs are the part everyone budgets for and the smaller half of the answer. What the money actually has to cover, why the deepest point comes months after you open, and what a lender can and cannot do about it.
Read the guideAre your costs normal for your industry?
You want to know whether your cost base is ordinary for what you do.
The ATO publishes what businesses in 100 industries actually spend, drawn from real tax returns. How to read your own figures against it, the one deduction that decides the answer, and what a gap is worth commercially.
Read the guideBreak-even is the floor, not the target
You know roughly what your business turns over and want to know how much room it has.
Working out the revenue a business needs is the easy half. What matters is the room above it, how fast that room disappears when trading softens, and which lever buys the most of it back.
Read the guideWhat actually decides how much business you can buy
You are working out what you can realistically buy, before you go looking.
Where the money in an acquisition comes from, why your equity is smaller than the figure in your head, and why finding a better business often does not raise the number at all.
Read the guideThe seven levers that move profit and cash
You run a trading business, you want more profit or more cash out of it, and you would rather know which lever is worth pulling before you pull it.
There are only seven things you can change in a business. One per cent on each of them is worth more than five per cent on any one, and a credit team reads four of them completely differently to the other three.
Read the guideWhat these are not
No lender is named in any of them.
Guides written by brokers usually end by recommending a lender and a product, and the most concrete thing in them is a bank's stated policy. We are a brokerage and we still do not write that section. Which lender suits a deal depends on the deal, so a answer set down in a guide is either wrong or an advertisement, and stated policies change often enough that printing them would be a liability rather than a service.
Every threshold in these guides is a level commonly seen across the market. Every lender sets its own, and they move with the cycle and the sector. What does not move is the arithmetic: which earnings get adopted, what rate they are tested at, and what happens to your covenant headroom afterwards.
General information only. Not credit advice, not a credit assessment, and not an offer of finance.
Then run your own numbers
Every guide points at the tools that do its arithmetic. There are 18 free calculators, no sign-up and no email required, and a glossary that explains every term in them from the credit side.
Want a straight read on your deal?
Book a free call with Nick. Bring the numbers you have, and we will tell you the right service level and the fixed fee. No obligation.
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