You already know your number. Most owners do. It sits behind every funding conversation like a grade you never agreed to be given, and the question I hear before almost any other on the desk is some version of: is my score good enough for this?
The honest answer is that it depends which score, because you have more than one, and on what you are asking the money to do. A 580 that ends a bank conversation in the first minute is barely a speed bump on a revenue-based file. A 700 that clears an equipment approval on its own may still not carry a two year old business through SBA underwriting.
So this is the version of the guide I wish more owners read before applying anywhere. The actual floors by product. Which of your scores gets pulled and when. The SBA rule change from this past March that most articles still have wrong. And what I would spend sixty days fixing if the number really is the thing in the way.
Start with which score they mean
When a lender says credit, they could be reading any of four systems.
The one you know is the personal FICO score, 300 to 850. FICO publishes the recipe: payment history is 35 percent of the score, amounts owed 30 percent, length of history 15 percent, new credit 10 percent, credit mix 10 percent. Two of those five, payment history and balances, are most of the game. For context on where you stand, Experian’s data put the average American FICO score at 713 as 2025 closed, down two points from the year before, the first drop in over a decade.
One caution on the free apps. Most of them display a VantageScore, a different model than FICO. Close, usually. The same number, rarely. FICO says 90 percent of top lenders use its scores, so treat the app as a weather report and the FICO as the forecast that decides whether the deal flies.
Then there are the scores your business earns on its own once it has trade history. Dun and Bradstreet’s PAYDEX runs 1 to 100 and is built almost entirely from payment records your suppliers report. Chase’s explainer draws the lines the way most credit desks do: 80 to 100 is the low risk band, and under 50 is where vendors start asking for deposits. Experian’s Intelliscore Plus runs 1 to 100 in the version most lenders still pull, with 76 and up considered low risk, and the newest version moved to a 300 to 850 scale to look like consumer credit. And FICO makes a small business score called SBSS, 0 to 300, that blends your personal credit, your business credit, and your financials into one number.
Here is the part that surprises owners who formed an LLC specifically to keep business and personal separate. For funding purposes, the wall is thin. In the Federal Reserve’s 2026 Small Business Credit Survey, 59 percent of firms carrying debt had secured it with a personal guarantee. The entity protects your liability. Your credit follows you through the door anyway, and on most working capital files under half a million dollars, the personal score is the one being read.
The floors, product by product
The table first, then what each row actually means. These floors are gates, not prices. Clearing one starts a conversation. The rest of your file decides how the conversation goes.
| Product | Where credit sits | Realistic floor | The decision mostly rides on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Merchant cash advance | Secondary | 500s fund on strong revenue | Monthly deposits, $15k+, 6+ months in business |
| Business line of credit | Primary gate | 650+ | Credit plus steady deposits |
| Equipment financing | Shared with the collateral | 600+ | The equipment’s value, then your credit |
| SBA loan | Primary gate | 680+ | The full financial package |
| Bank term loan | Primary gate | 680 to 720+ | Financials, history, the relationship |
| Invoice factoring | Mostly ignored | None | Your customers’ credit |
| Purchase order financing | Mostly ignored | None | Your customer and your supplier |
Merchant cash advances
A merchant cash advance is a purchase of your future receivables, and the underwriting reads like it: deposits first. The box we work with is $15,000 or more a month in business bank deposits, six or more months in business, no open bankruptcy. Resolved ones are fine. Credit gets read for context, existing positions, recent defaults, not as a gate, which is why files in the 500s get funded on deposit strength every week while an 800 score startup with no revenue does not.
What a rough score does change is shape. Pricing is a factor rate, typically 1.15 to 1.30, and repayment runs as a fixed weekly, biweekly, or monthly debit sized to your revenue over terms that usually span 2 to 10 months. Weaker credit tends to mean the shorter end of that range and a smaller first advance, with room to grow it once you have payment history. The full picture of what an underwriter sees in your statements is its own subject, and I wrote up how underwriters read your bank statements separately.
Business lines of credit
A business line of credit is the first product on this list where credit is a true gate, because the line is revolving and mostly unsecured. The working floor is 650, with steady deposits and one to two years in business preferred. Rates run roughly 7 to 25 percent APR depending on whether a bank or an online lender is writing it, and approval takes about a week. If you are at 630 and the line is the goal, it is usually worth the sixty day cleanup below rather than forcing the application now. The mechanics, and the fee schedule worth reading twice, are in how a line of credit actually works.
Equipment financing
The collateral does half the qualifying here. With equipment financing, the machine secures the deal, so the desk can live with a 600 floor, terms up to 7 years, rates roughly 6 to 25 percent APR, and closings in 3 to 10 business days. Startups get through on strong personal credit more often here than anywhere else on this list, because the lender can always repossess a truck. Nobody can repossess a working capital wire.
SBA loans and bank term loans
The cheapest money on the menu and the most credit-sensitive. For an SBA loan, plan on 680 or better personal credit, two or more years in business, real financials, and no delinquent federal debt, with 30 to 90 days of process, or 2 to 3 weeks through Express. Bank term loans read the same file with the same eyes, often wanting 720.
Now the change worth knowing, because most articles on this subject have not caught up. Since June 2025, under SOP 50 10 8, lenders had to prescreen smaller 7(a) applications, $350,000 and under, with that FICO SBSS score, and the minimum to pass moved from 155 to 165. A machine number could bounce your file before a human read it. That prescreen is gone. SBA Procedural Notice 5000-875701, issued in January, discontinued the SBSS requirement for 7(a) Small Loans effective March 1, 2026. Lenders now underwrite those files with their own full credit analysis, and the notice specifically bars them from leaning on consumer credit scores alone.
Two practical takeaways. Your small SBA application can no longer die on a single score you have never seen. And it did not get easier, it got more human: the 680 convention still describes who banks say yes to, and some lenders still run SBSS voluntarily because they trust it. If you are weighing this lane against the fast one, I put the advance and the SBA loan head to head already.
Factoring and purchase order financing
If your score is wrecked and your customers are solid, read this section twice. With invoice factoring you sell your outstanding B2B invoices: 80 to 95 percent of face value lands within about 24 hours, the rest minus a fee of roughly 1 to 5 percent per 30 days when your customer pays. The approval rides your customers’ credit, not yours. A two truck carrier hauling for a national shipper can factor those invoices with a personal score no bank would touch, because the shipper is the one being underwritten.
And purchase order financing works the same logic one step earlier: a funder pays your supplier directly against a confirmed PO for finished goods, and it wants a creditworthy end customer and a 20 to 30 percent margin more than it wants your FICO.
What moves a file more than the score
The Fed’s 2026 survey numbers are worth sitting with. Of employer firms that applied for a loan, line, or advance, 42 percent got everything they asked for, 36 percent got part of it, 22 percent got nothing. Small banks said yes most completely, fully approving 57 percent of their applicants. And the fast lane keeps growing: 29 percent of applicants tried an online lender, up from 17 percent five years earlier.
Same survey, the uncomfortable number: 60 percent of the people who borrowed from those online lenders said the real cost came in higher than expected. Speed and credit forgiveness are real products. They are also priced. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you the second thing while describing the first.
Inside those approval numbers, score is one input. On revenue-based files it is rarely the deciding one. What actually separates two applications carrying the same 620:
- Average daily balance, and how many days the account went negative
- How consistent deposits run month over month, separate from the size of them
- Existing advance balances and what they already take out of each week
- Time in business and the industry the revenue comes from
- The ask itself, sized sane or sized desperate against monthly revenue
A pattern from this spring, told the way I saw it. Two files, both about 620. A carrier with steady brokered freight deposits and zero negative days got approved in a day on terms near the top of the menu. A retail file with the same score and nine negative days in May got a smaller offer on a shorter term. The bureaus scored those owners as identical risks. The bank statements did not, and the statements won.
Run the cost math before you take the fast yes, whatever your score. A $40,000 advance at a 1.24 factor pays back $49,600, so the money costs $9,600. Across 20 weeks that is a $2,480 weekly debit. For an owner around 610 who needs the $40,000, I see two realistic plays: take the advance now if the money is buying something that clearly outearns the $9,600, an inventory position, a contract mobilization, a season. Or, if the need can wait, spend the sixty days below and re-shop the cheaper desks with a better number. I would let the deadline decide, not the impatience. The rest of the arithmetic lives in what a factor rate actually costs and in the fees that come out before the wire.
One mechanical point that protects your score while you shop. Advances and most online products start with a soft pull, which does not move your credit. At Poseidon we run one soft pull and read the file against the whole menu, which is the point of a shop that places more than one product. Hard pulls generally come from banks and SBA lenders at final approval. Per FICO, inquiries sit on your report for two years but only the last 12 months count toward the score, and its research shows a burst of new accounts in a short window represents greater risk. Sequence your applications. Do not blast ten portals in an afternoon.
The sixty day fixes that actually move a score
If the floor you need is within about 40 points, cleanup beats shopping. In order of speed:
Pull all three reports before any lender does. AnnualCreditReport.com is the official source, free from each bureau, and you can check them online well beyond the old once a year floor. Read them like an underwriter would. The FTC’s congressionally mandated accuracy study found one in five consumers had an error on at least one report, and five percent had errors serious enough to make borrowing more expensive. Dispute in writing with the bureau and the company that reported the item. The bureaus work disputes on a clock measured in weeks, which is why this comes first.
Then balances. Amounts owed is 30 percent of the FICO recipe, and it is the only large lever that moves in one statement cycle. Pay revolving cards down before the statement date, not the due date, because the balance that posts is the balance the score reads. Maxed cards read as stress even when you pay on time.
Then stop applying. New credit is 10 percent of the score, and the quickest way to look desperate on paper is a fresh inquiry every week. Ninety days of quiet before a bank application is not wasted time.
And start the business side now, even though it pays off in months, not weeks. Get your D&B number, use suppliers who report, and pay trade lines on the due date. That payment record is the entire PAYDEX input, and 80 is where the low risk band starts. The first file it helps may be two funding rounds from now. It still compounds.
The honest limit: none of this erases a recent default, an open collection, or a tax lien by the time you need an answer. If the need is this quarter, that is exactly the gap the revenue-based desk exists to cover, and I broke down what actually gets funded with bad credit, which is more than most owners expect.
Questions I get every week
Can I get business funding with a credit score in the 500s?
Yes, on revenue strength. Advances read bank deposits first: $15,000 or more a month and six months in business carry more weight than the bureau number, and files in the 500s get funded on strong deposits every week. Expect the structure to reflect the credit, shorter terms and pricing toward the top of the typical factor band.
Do business lenders check my personal credit score?
Almost always. In the Fed’s 2026 survey, 59 percent of firms carrying debt had secured it with a personal guarantee. An LLC separates liability. It does not build a separate credit identity until the business has its own paid trade history, so on most files under half a million dollars, your score is the one being read.
What credit score do I need for an SBA loan in 2026?
Plan on 680 or better personal credit plus two years of financials that hold up. The machine prescreen, the SBSS minimum of 165 on loans of $350,000 or less, ended March 1, 2026 under Procedural Notice 5000-875701. Lenders now run their own full credit analysis on small SBA files instead of bouncing them on one number.
Does applying for funding hurt my credit score?
Usually not at the start. Advances and most online products begin with a soft pull, which does not move your score. Hard pulls typically come from banks and SBA lenders at final approval. Inquiries stay on the report for two years, and FICO reads only the last 12 months of them.
The check worth running today
Pull your last four months of bank statements and average the deposits. Then pull your FICO. Those two numbers, side by side, tell you which door is yours: strong deposits and a bruised score points to the revenue-based desk, strong score and thinner deposits points to the credit-priced desks, both strong and you are shopping on price, which is the good problem.
Most of the expensive mistakes I see are one of those files walking through the wrong door and taking the terms that door offers.
Even if funding is not on the table this quarter, pull the three reports anyway. They are free, one in five have an error worth finding, and fixing yours before a lender reads them costs nothing but attention.