SPONSORED CONTENT FROM LQD BUSINESS FINANCE
The centerpiece of the Federally-authorized Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is the ability of small businesses to obtain a forgivable loan.
This means that Small Business Administration (SBA) loans obtained under the guidelines of PPP, one of the governments’ flagship efforts to provide relief to small businesses suffering under pandemic shutdown orders, can become exempt from repayment.
Yes, that means you don’t have to pay back the loan—not the principal, not the federally-mandated 1% interest. The debt is forgiven.
A PPP loan is not free money, though. There are strings attached. Notably:
Hoops Must Be Jumped Through
To qualify for forgiveness, at least 60% of the loan proceeds must go to payroll costs, the rest to essential expenses like mortgage payments, rent and utilities.
Loan Forgiveness is Not Automatic
As with every government interaction, paperwork must be filed before anything gets done. For the forgiveness of a PPP loan, the paperwork burden can be quite heavy.
Borrowers Run the Risk of an Audit
If the paperwork you file does not satisfy the bureaucrats who review it, they reserve the right to audit your files to verify the paperwork, holding up your loan forgiveness in the process. As with any government audit, this can entail a long and intrusive look into your private business, with potential collateral damage if they see something they don’t like.
A solution is clearly needed to allow small businesses to hold the government accountable to the promises of its multi trillion-dollar COVID-19 relief package. LQD Business Finance offers that solution in the form of its proprietary PPP Loan Forgiveness Platform.
LQD Business Finance’s timely, user-friendly platform includes two versions:
- A free service that allows users to easily compile their PPP forgiveness paperwork and gives users a sense of their audit risk.
- An affordable premium service that offers end-to-end paperwork platform, as well live technical support and free audit protection. The cost of the premium service is $250.
Who Can Use It?
The PPP Loan Forgiveness Platform by LQD Business Finance is a powerful solution for obtaining SBA PPP loan forgiveness, available to:
Borrowers
Any business owner who has obtained an SBA PPP loan can prepare or file their own paperwork online using the LQD PPP Forgiveness Platform in either its free or premium version. These borrowers can create a user account directly on the platform’s website.
Lenders
A key feature of PPP loans is that they are not issued directly by the government. Congress effectively authorized existing SBA lenders, including banks and institutional lenders, to offer PPP loans as a new product, with loan forgiveness backed by a PPP appropriation.
This means that SBA lenders who offer PPP loans have as much to gain as the borrower from PPP Loan Forgiveness. In addition to easy processing of loan forgiveness using borrower-provided data, LQD Business Finance offers a dynamic web-based dashboard that lenders can use to track their entire portfolio of loans.
The premium service also offers lenders advanced analytics and batched-download capability.
Accountants
Accountants offering PPP loan forgiveness processing services can use LQD’s platform to easily process client-submitted data, aggregating each account into a user-friendly Provider Management Dashboard, with live remote-desktop support to address issues and eliminate bottlenecks.
Easy Paperwork Processing
Without LQD Business Finance’s powerful data integrations and automations, filling out PPP Loan Forgiveness paperwork can feel like pulling teeth—which puts it on par with most government-required documentation.
The PPP Loan Forgiveness Platform by LQD Business Finance, in either its free or premium version, makes compiling the paperwork a snap.
Once the account is created, the PPP Loan Forgiveness Platform uses industry-leading automation and data integration to:
- Collect all required data and documentation.
- Perform all required payroll, FTE and expense calculations.
- Perform an audit risk assessment with secondary QC verification.
- Generate a completed PPP Loan Forgiveness Application.
- Provide a cloud-based backup folder containing all required data and verification documents.
Users who have opted for the free service can then submit the auto-generated application.
Users who have purchased the premium service also benefit from end-to-end application processing. No more steps need to be taken—LQD Business Finance handles the filing.
Preparing for (or Avoiding) an Audit
A manageable forgiveness application process is a valuable service, but arming borrowers to avoid an audit is arguably even more important.
Government audits are not guaranteed. If your paperwork raises no red flags, government bureaucrats will probably accept the paperwork without question. However, as the IRS does with tax filings, the SBA reserves the right to audit your files for additional documentation
At their best, government audits are intrusive and hold up the process of your loan forgiveness. At their worst, they might reduce the portion of your loan that is forgivable. They could even uncover details that put you in hot water, possibly requiring costly legal defense even if you have done nothing wrong.
LQD Business Finance offers borrowers revolutionary tools to reduce the risk of an audit. In the free version, this takes the form of an Audit Risk Score. Verified by a secondary quality control examination, the Audit Risk Score provides users insight into how likely they are to face an audit. The Audit Risk Score also comes with action steps to help you prepare for the audit in the event that you face one.
Audit Protection
LQD Business Finance is unique among PPP service providers in offering a proprietary program of Audit Protection. This feature is available with the premium service only, not the free service.
In addition to end-to-end processing and filing, premium users gain access to rigorous quality control, as well as defense of the application in the event of an audit. Remember, by acting as a middleman in the preparation of the paperwork, LQD Business Finance is making a calculation of your repayment liability.
With audit protection, LQD Business Finance takes full responsibility for that calculation and defends your application on your behalf in the event of an audit. In doing so, LQD Business Finance is defending not only you, but its own work.
If any miscalculations in PPP forgiveness eligibility can be attributed to LQD Business Finance’s platform (and not borrower error or omission), LQD Business Finance will stand by its platform and pay any liability assessment for that miscalculation (subject to Audit Protection T&C).
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core. Secondary to those affected by the appalling loss of life, small businesses have borne the brunt of the economic shutdowns that followed in its wake.
PPP Loans are not a perfect solution. However, for those small businesses who depended on these loans as a life raft to keep from stuttering permanently, the PPP Loan Forgiveness Platform by LQD Business Finance is an affordable or even free way to make sure that this cumbersome Federal program works in the way it was intended—to keep doors open, paychecks flowing, employees healthy, and the promise of America alive and breathing.
