Starting Business Debt Settlement: 5 Groups of Documents to Prepare

The file decides what the first meeting can accomplish.

An owner can describe pressure in a few sentences. The description does not tell the reviewer which obligations exist, which payments occurred, or which notices require action. Documents answer those questions. Owners apologize for the state of their records. No apology is necessary, since the state of the records is the reason for the meeting.

1. Collect the Signed Agreements

Gather the executed contract for each balance, with guarantees, attachments, renewals, and amendments. The proposal the owner received before funding may differ from the terms accepted at funding, and only the signed version establishes what the business promised.

Rarely does the first production include the amendment. Renewals tend to live with the funder rather than in the business office, so the owner should request the current version of every agreement in writing and note which requests remain open. Simply label what is missing and send what exists.

The signature page was complete. The agreement was not. A full set of signatures on an incomplete set of pages still leaves the reviewer guessing about the term, the rate, or the security the business granted.

2. Reconstruct Payments and Communications

In LG Funding v. United Senior Properties of Olathe, appellate judges weighed reconciliation practice, the definiteness of the term, and recourse in bankruptcy when assessing whether repayment was absolute. The lesson for intake is direct: the clause matters, and the operation of the clause carries equal weight, so the reviewer needs both the agreement and the record of how withdrawals behaved.

Provide bank records showing funds received and payments remitted, with disputed debits flagged in context rather than clipped into isolation. A screenshot of one charge explains little. The surrounding weeks of transactions show whether the debit followed the stated percentage of receipts or departed from it, which is the question reconciliation analysis asks. There are circumstances where less suffices, though the file is what the creditor reads in most cases.

Have counsel review and analyze the correspondence file alongside the ledger, because the two tell different parts of the story and each corrects the other (a request for adjusted withdrawals often produces the current version of terms the owner has never seen, since amendments tend to reside with the funder and surface only when the business asks for relief in writing).

Counsel should ensure demands receive attention and ensure service papers are preserved with proof of delivery, since litigation and arbitration notices impose obligations that continue while the owner gathers the remaining records. A creditor may delay reconciliation in order to preserve its version of the balance. What the owner provides, or fails to provide, at intake shapes the response the reviewer can construct, so the reviewer needs the agreement, the ledger of payments, the correspondence file, and a candid statement of which pages are absent and why.

Resist the urge to discard statements that show missed payments or to forward the file to any new recipient before the intake address is confirmed. Gaps in payment history inform the strategy; they do not disqualify the business from review. This preparation is extremely useful because it replaces repeated requests with a coherent record, and the documents do not win the negotiation by themselves, but no negotiation proceeds without them.

3. State Current Cash in Plain Figures

Set down collected funds, expected receipts, and the operating costs that must be paid while discussions proceed. Name the source of any money proposed for settlement. A customer payment expected next month is not cash on hand.

Estimates belong in the forecast only when marked as estimates.

The forecast fits on one page.

4. Delancey Street and the Initial Review

Delancey Street offers an initial review for businesses considering settlement of MCA balances. The review is free and confidential, and legal matters are coordinated with independently licensed counsel. Delancey Street is a debt settlement company, not a law firm, so representation for legal work is confirmed under a separate engagement.

Ask which accounts qualify and which records the reviewer needs first. Confirm fees and scope before sending sensitive material beyond what the agreed process requires, and resist forwarding the file through an unfamiliar portal, even briefly, before the recipient is verified.

5. Maintain the Record After Intake

New statements, fresh debits, and correspondence arrive after the first production, and each one can alter the assessment. Assign one person inside the business to collect and preserve these materials, and transmit material updates to the reviewer instead of holding them for the next scheduled call. The process becomes extremely difficult when the adviser works from a forecast the owner has already outlived.

Keep executed terms apart from pending offers. An account under discussion is not an account resolved, and the operating forecast should carry both categories without confusion. The IRS guidance on canceled debt explains that cancellation can create income, subject to exceptions and exclusions that turn on the taxpayer, so tax records should join the file before any discount is treated as savings (the precise boundary of each exclusion is a matter for qualified advice, and this file cannot supply it).

A reviewer who consults and contacts the business on the basis of current papers can respond when a creditor moves. That responsiveness is the return on the discipline of the file. I have stopped asking owners to summarize before I see the statements, since the statements summarize better. Delancey Street initial review offers an entry point for the MCA portion of the assessment, and a file that stays current keeps that assessment honest, which leaves the owner with a peculiar but durable advantage: decisions made from paper rather than from memory.