What is a business debt schedule?

A debt schedule is a single table listing every debt the business owes: who the creditor is, what type of debt it is, how much is still owed, what each payment is and how often it hits, and when each debt ends. It is standard paperwork in loan applications, refinancing, restructuring negotiations and settlement talks — and it is the fastest way to see your own position honestly. Most owners with multiple MCAs have never written the whole stack on one page; the totals are usually worse than expected, which is exactly the point.

How to fill it in when you have MCAs

Three rules keep an MCA-heavy schedule accurate:

  • Enter what is still owed, not what you took. For a merchant cash advance, the remaining balance is the total payback still ahead of you — the remaining debits — not the original deposit. Your funding contract or latest statement shows the payoff amount; ask the funder for it in writing.
  • Enter the payment you actually see. Use the daily or weekly debit from your bank statement, and the matching frequency. The tool converts everything to a monthly cost (21 business days, 4.33 weeks).
  • Put the rate you were quoted, if any. A factor rate like 1.30× is fine. If you only know the total, our factor rate calculator recovers it, and the daily debit calculator explains the debit itself.

How lenders and negotiators read a debt schedule

A consolidation lender looks at monthly debt service against revenue: above roughly 20%, few conventional products will refinance the stack, and the offers that remain are expensive. A restructuring firm looks at which creditors can be stretched and which cannot — MCAs debit daily and sue fast, so they get addressed first. A settlement negotiator uses the schedule to price lump-sum offers per creditor. The same table serves all three, so keep it current: update balances monthly while you are in any negotiation.

What to do when the totals look bad

If debt service takes more than a fifth of revenue, the options in rough order of cost: restructure the payments (how that works), consolidate into a cheaper product if you still qualify (lenders compared, reverse consolidation), or settle the debts for less than the balance (the process, settlement cost calculator). Stacking another advance to cover the schedule is the one move that reliably makes it worse — see why stacking happens.

Background: what an MCA is, the five forms of MCA debt relief, and the payback & APR calculator for pricing a single advance.