The 90 Day Fundability Plan: What to Fix Before You Apply

We meet founders who want money yesterday and are surprised when applications stall or get expensive. Most problems are not exotic. They are fixable, and they show up in the same five places every time: credit, cash flow clarity, use-of-funds, legal and entity hygiene, and contingency planning.

If you have 90 days before you apply, use them as a sequence, not a scattershot to do a few good things. Below is a practical 90 day plan, broken into weekly checkpoints, followed by the lender ready packet you should assemble when you are done.

Why 90 days

Ninety days is short enough to preserve urgency, and long enough to move leverageable levers: lower credit utilization, correct reporting errors, build a clean set of financials, and test the key assumptions behind your raise. Lenders and many investors make decisions in weeks, not months. If you appear organized and predictable at application time, they treat you differently.

The 90 day plan - week by week

Weeks 1 to 2 - Baseline and immediate fixes

• Pull the files: personal credit reports from all three bureaus, your personal FICO if you can, business credit profiles if you have them, three months of business bank statements, the last fiscal year P and L, and the current year month to date. You need to see what the underwriter will see.
• One sentence use of funds: write it and include amount, purpose, and timeline. Example: We need 125,000 to buy inventory for the Q4 cycle, sold at a 40 percent gross margin, turning every 60 days. If you cannot do that, you are not ready.
• Quick credit moves: reduce revolving balances to under 30 percent utilization where possible, set up autopay on all recurring accounts, and flag any billing disputes to prevent late marks while you clean the record.

Weeks 3 to 6 - Credit repair and documentation

• Dispute real errors: file formal disputes for incorrect accounts, balances, and inquiries. Lenders expect cleaned reports, not perfect ones, but errors fixed now stop unexpected surprises later.
• Address collections and negotiables: call small charge offs or collections and negotiate pay for delete where feasible. Document every agreement in writing.
• Formalize bookkeeping: reconcile bank accounts, correct mislabeled deposits, and produce a clean month end trial balance. If your books were on a shoebox, hire a bookkeeper for a two week catch up.
• Build simple, defensible forecasts: 12 months of revenues and expenses, plus three scenarios - base, slow, and fast. Lenders want to see runway math, not optimism.

Weeks 7 to 10 - Control the narrative

• Prepare the use of funds model: one page that shows how the capital converts to revenue, margin, and cash flow. If it is marketing, include CAC and payback month. If it is equipment, show the capacity increase and the payback period.
• Legal and entity hygiene: confirm business registration, EIN, state filings, and that bank accounts are in the business name. If you have personal guarantees on leases or prior loans, list them plainly.
• Clean the file bundle: profit and loss for last 12 months, bank statements, signed leases, major contracts, and any receivable aging. Scan and name files clearly.

Weeks 11 to 13 - Stress test and package

• Stress test the plan: run the base scenario with a 20 to 30 percent revenue shortfall and see how long you can service the proposed debt or how much runway remains after an equity raise. If you cannot survive a reasonable downside, change the instrument or amount.
• Price and instrument selection: decide if you need term debt, a revolving line, equipment finance, or equity. Match term to life of the asset or the expected payback, and avoid forcing short term instruments on long lived needs.
• Create the lender ready packet: combine your one sentence use of funds, the one page use of funds model, three scenario cash flow, last 12 months P and L, 6 to 12 months of bank statements, key contracts, and a short founder statement that answers what success looks like in numbers.

The lender ready packet - one page checklist

• One sentence use of funds
• One page return-on-capital model
• Three scenario 12 month cash flow
• Last 12 months P and L, most recent balance sheet
• Last 6 to 12 months bank statements
• Business entity documents, leases, and major contracts
• Personal credit report summaries and notes on any disputes or negotiated collections
• List of existing debts with terms and any personal guarantees
• Contingency plan - what you do if revenue is 20 percent below plan

What good looks like at day 90

• Personal revolving utilization under 30 percent and most payment histories cleared or in documented dispute
• Bookkeeping reconciled to bank statements and a tidy P and L for last 12 months
• A one page capital use model that shows when the new money returns margin and cash flow
• A transparent contingency plan that shows lender what happens at plausible downside
• A packet that can be sent in a single email with named files and one cover note

Why this matters

Underwriters and investors are pattern matchers. They want to see that you think in numbers, that you understand the specific job for the capital, and that you have mitigations for common failures. Ninety days is not a guarantee, but it is the minimum interval where high leverage, low complexity actions improve your terms and access.

If you want our checklist in a fillable template or a 60 minute review of your 90 day plan, send the one sentence use of funds and your most recent P and L. No deck, no sales pitch, just a focused read of whether your plan will survive hard questions.