How we work
From call to lender-ready plan in two weeks.
Don't know what you need? Most of our clients don't. We figure it out together on the call.
01
Discovery call
Free, 30 minutes. We learn about your business, the loan you're applying for, and what your lender needs to see. No prep required — just show up and talk.
Most clients arrive at the discovery call with one of three questions: which lender to apply to, how much to ask for, or what the bank actually wants in the plan. We work through all three on the call. You leave with a defined scope, a fixed quote, and a delivery date. If we're not the right fit, we say so — usually because the loan is too small to justify a custom plan, in which case we point you at BDC's free template or a freelancer instead.
02
Intake
We send a structured questionnaire to gather everything we need: financials, history, team, market, use of funds. Most clients finish it in under an hour.
The intake form is designed around the underwriting questions Canadian credit officers ask. Existing financials, ownership structure, year-over-year history, customer concentration, key suppliers, planned use of funds, owner net worth. We also flag specific lender requirements at intake — BDC's use-of-funds format is different from CSBFP's, and immigration plans need fields a loan plan doesn't.
03
Drafting
5–7 business days. We write the full plan: narrative, market analysis, operations, financials, assumptions. Lender-ready format.
Drafting follows a documented sequence: financial model first (so revenue and cost assumptions are locked before they get described in prose), then operations and team, then market analysis with Canadian data sources, then risk and mitigation, then executive summary last. Sensitivity scenarios (base / downside / upside) are built into the financial model from the start. Immigration plans add settlement and job-creation sections; acquisition plans add valuation methodology and integration plans.
04
Review and revise
You review the draft. We do one round of revisions based on your feedback — wording, numbers, scope adjustments.
You receive the full draft as a PDF and an editable Word document. Most revision rounds focus on three things: numbers that need adjusting after you talk to your accountant, operational details we couldn't have known without your input, and tone adjustments for the specific reader (BDC officer vs. branch RM vs. immigration officer reads differently). Revisions are turned around within 3 business days.
05
Final delivery
PDF + Word document, formatted to your lender's expectations. We're available for follow-up questions when you submit to the bank.
Final delivery includes the lender-formatted PDF, an editable Word document, and the underlying Excel financial model. Most Canadian lenders ask follow-up questions during underwriting — we're available to help you respond to those questions for the 30 days after delivery, at no additional charge. If the lender comes back with a request for a material rewrite (rare, but possible), we scope that as a separate engagement.
What the timeline looks like in practice.
From signed scope to final delivery is typically two weeks for a standard loan plan and three weeks for an immigration or acquisition plan. The bottleneck is rarely our drafting speed — it's usually waiting on the client's financial documents during intake. Clients who arrive at the discovery call with their last three years of financial statements in hand can compress the timeline by about a week.
After delivery, the lender's underwriting cycle adds another 2–6 weeks depending on the program (BDC Online Financing is fastest at under 10 days; big-six commercial files take 4–6 weeks; CSBFP-paired files sit between). We stay available through underwriting to respond to lender follow-up questions.