Calculate how much you can borrow for business expansion or acquisition using historical financials. Free calculator shows debt service coverage and maximum loan amount.
Planning to expand your existing business or acquire another company? Know your realistic loan amount before you spend weeks gathering documents and talking to banks.
Our free SBA Loan Calculator uses your actual historical financials to show you the same math lenders use during underwriting. Based on real revenue and expense data—not assumptions—you'll see exactly how much your business can borrow.
When lenders review your application, they're "spreading your financials"—taking your tax returns and calculating whether your business generates enough cash flow to support the loan payments.
Every lender has different requirements, but they're all doing the same basic calculation. This calculator replicates that process so you can see what they see and understand your realistic borrowing capacity.
This calculator is designed specifically for business expansions and acquisitions where you have historical financial data to work with. It's not a projection tool—it analyzes actual past performance.
Historical Cash Flow Analysis: Enter your last three years of tax returns plus current year-to-date financials to see your business's actual cash flow available for debt service.
Add-Back Calculations: Identify what expenses lenders will add back—owner salary, depreciation, interest on existing debt, and other non-operating expenses.
Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR): See if you meet lender requirements (typically 1.0x to 1.6x) and calculate your maximum loan amount at different coverage levels.
Year-by-Year Comparison: Understand how your borrowing capacity varies based on each year's actual performance.
Available as Excel or Google Sheets with all formulas unlocked.
Use this calculator when:
Depreciation is almost always added back because it's a non-cash expense.
Interest on existing debt can be added back if that debt will be paid off with your SBA loan. If you're keeping some existing debt, only add back the interest that will go away.
Owner compensation is often the biggest add-back but also the trickiest. If you're buying a business, lenders will look at whether you can realistically operate without taking a salary. If you have a mortgage, kids, and you're leaving your job to run this business full-time, they may require you to plan on taking $75,000+ annually, which reduces your available cash flow.
One-time expenses like legal fees or moving costs can sometimes be added back with proper documentation.
DSCR is how lenders measure your cushion. A DSCR of 1.25 means you have $1.25 in cash flow for every $1.00 of debt payments.
Different lenders require different levels:
Here's the kicker: some lenders require you to hit their threshold all three years. Others focus mainly on your most recent year if you're showing growth.
This is why the same business might qualify for $300,000 with one lender and $1 million with another. Different underwriting policies create dramatically different loan amounts.
If your business is growing or had an off year, your maximum loan amount can look very different depending on which year the lender focuses on.
Your borrowing capacity is often limited by your weakest year, not your strongest. But if you can explain why an earlier year was unusual (major investment, temporary situation, etc.) and show a clear upward trend, some lenders will weigh your recent performance more heavily.
The calculator lets you model these scenarios so you know which lenders to approach.
This calculator works with actual historical data from tax returns, not financial projections:
The calculator shows you where you stand with different lender requirements so you can approach the right banks for your situation.
Want feedback on your numbers? Send your completed calculator to support@projectionhub.com and we'll review it for free.
