Anyone dealing with grants and various other "stimulus" items from a business standpoint? So far, I've found it's could essentially be a full time job seeing what's available for my wife's practice.
We've got enough cash to get by for several months, but grants are grants. Who knows if we'll actually receive any money out of them, but got one in by today's deadline for a state program that was less than an hour's work and might provide as much as $11K.
There's another state one (smaller) for targeted small business (minority/woman owned-- the latter in our case) that we've got a little more time to apply for, but the paperwork required is quite a bit more burdensome.
Both of these we were pointed at by our banker, who is also scrambling right now for all of the other "stimulus" programs going on that are supposed to roll out through the SBA. More details on those are supposed to hit come Friday.
Known details so far don't make the application and paperwork process look easy, but the most attractive of them look like forgivable loans to keep folks on the payroll, with the amount of forgiveness scaled on whether you can get your employee numbers back somewhere close to where they were before this whole gymkhana started.
Not exactly stress release handling this and another job I'm currently working from home.
And it looks like I probably need to go back to the office tomorrow as well so we can prepare for remote testing by a customer who's furloughed all but some essential employees. We want to make up time on this program during this interruption, after all.
This link was passed on to me today. It still makes for some heavy reading on how to tailor it to your world.
https://associationdatabase.com/aws/OHLA/asset_manager/get_file/437084
It's amazing how many people think small businesses are getting these magic grants instantly. When you look deeper, not much will be given out and very little will be forgiven.
You are expected to keep and fund your current payroll on the hopes you get approved for the loan, and the chance it will be forgiven, all before you run out of money with none coming in the door. Good luck.
The main part of qualifying for forgiveness is not having your payroll decline by more than 25% in the months after you get the loan. I think most small businesses will decline at least that far from lack of customers anyway.
My wife's school looked at it. They could get $11k a month. It barely covers their mortgage and is 1/4 of monthly payroll. Many parents have stopped paying. I'm afraid the place is gonna close after nearly 50 years. Just too much mortgage for not enough kids and too much staff.
We've also had the fun of an employee filing for unemployment under the assumption she'd make more money that way than what she's getting paid.
umm... you still have a job here, do you want us to lay you off? The answer was no.
I think she finally figured out as a part time employee, even augmented benefits were going to come to squat.
I'm probably not going to go after that SBA/forgiven loan. They don't have a mechanism in place to pay off the loans yet, it could easily be a year before that happens. Meanwhile I'm paying every month. I've furloughed my staff so they can collect unemployment and with those payments, with the plussed up amount and the $1200 they'll get more than I was paying them.
These loans also take a good amount of time to get processed and have the money available, by the time that happens chances are I'll be back to work again and won't need it.
So I don't see the point in paying all the fees, doing the paperwork, waiting for the money, then paying it every month waiting for the forgiveness to happen. The only reason I'd do it is for my employees and they're gonna be fine with getting unemployment.
In reply to docwyte :
I've come to pretty much the same conclusion with my dental lab. I have two employees and looks a whole lot like we have a chance of coming back after this if we go on unemployment and use the capital I have to pay rent and utilities and keep enough back to restart.
In reply to Jason McRoberts :
The loan will pay your rent/utilities and be forgiven, so that's a plus. I own my building and the bank defered my mortgage for 3 months on it, so the "rent" payment, while nice, I don't really need.
We submitted our application for a loan today. That part was actually quite easy, paperwork-wise-- if all your payroll filings are up to date, it's less than an hours work. Or at least it was with our bank. It remains to be seen what the paperwork burden will be like on the forgiveness side.
So far, our need isn't extreme as a veterinary clinic-- business is down somewhere in the 25-40% depending on how we look at it, and that's still quite a pinch. That's mostly because we're trying to turn healthy pet business away to reduce traffic and keep the staff healthy. Most of the other clinics in our area had closed before this all started due to the doctors dying or retiring. The real concern is if the clinic has to shut down if we can't keep it staffed-- first employee is already out on 2 weeks of (paid, by law) medically ordered self isolation for COVID like symptoms not severe enough for them to test.
Generally details are the the amount is two and a half months of average 2019 payroll at half a percent interest, two year maturity, payments deferred for first 6 months (interest still accrues). No penalty for prepayment within the two year period. Any associated fees are supposed to be forgivable.
Our plan will be to hold the money in case we absolutely need it. We're certainly in much better shape than restaurants, hair salons, etc. From that standpoint (fingers crossed) it looks like the somewhat expected case of those that least need it will likely benefit the most.
On reading, that sounds like an optimistic outlook, but the stress level is high enough that I don't really feel that optimistic.
In reply to Karacticus :
I remember when Veterinary practices were considered "recession proof."
I'm lucky to be working for the proverbial 800 lb gorilla of veterinary hospitals after losing my practice in 2011.
Good luck.
In reply to Floating Doc :
Yeah, obviously if people run out of money to spend, it's going to turn into a problem.
In reply to Floating Doc :
Also, wondering-- VCA? Banfield?
Boy, do we have have stories about our experience with Banfield, but probably not for this forum.
OMG is it a full time job..... We will see what actually comes out of the SBA loans....
I applied for the $10k yesterday, apparently it's a grant, under no circumstances is it not forgiven. I may apply for the CARES Act money too, there's a limited amount of it. I'm going to set up a separate checking account for it so if I want to give it back I know exactly what I have there. What worries me is they still haven't delineated how the forgiveness process for that loan works. They've also raised the rates from 0.5% to 1%...
So, noticed today that the SBA 504 debenture payment that should have been taken from our account at the beginning of the month hasn't been withdrawn.
Dropped a note to our banker and he thinks those are being covered for 6 months as part of the stimulus plan-- he just started hearing about it today. Says he'll have more information tomorrow.
My closure got extended to April 30th. Applied for the PPP loan yesterday, hopefully I don't get funded for 4-6 weeks.
We were debating between the PPP and EIDL. I read everything I could over the weekend but was still a little confused as to which would be best for us.
I went to our (SBA-preferred) bank's website on Monday to find they were no longer accepting PPP applications. So we rolled the dice on the EIDL.
Banker is telling us PPP loan should be happening soon-- a loan number has been assigned, but, they are still waiting on information on what docs are actually required to fund/close the loan from up the chain.
I do have to say I'm quite pleased with our banker through this whole exercise. I'm not sure when he's sleeping at this point.
Applied for a PPP here too.....
I'll follow up by saying I hope I didn't berkeley it all up by applying for the EIDL.
In reply to poopshovel again :
Yep.... Should be ok from my reading.... But fingers crossed.
According to our banker, we're the first of his clients to get all of the paperwork back to him as of this morning, and the PPP loan should get funded on Monday.
Also confirmed that our 504 debenture payments are funded by the SBA for six payments, as evidenced by the payment that was not withdrawn at the beginning of this month. It remains to be seen what kind of profit & loss and/or tax consequences that's going to have.
The other item we are muddling through is exactly how the deferred federal payroll tax payments thing is going to work. I'd almost prefer not to take advantage of this one, but one gotcha out of the PPP (along with the whole very open ended "let's see what it takes to get this forgiven") is that you can't use it to pay your federal payroll tax liabilities since they have been deferred. The deferral of these payments feels like a large liability to build up to be paid at a later time.
I have been eyeing all this. I managed to put enough away to keep the doors open for 6 months or so and although projects have slowed down we have work that is still moving forward. I am wondering if I should be applying anyway but I also feel like it valued be a monkey on my back later.
In reply to dean1484 :
So far, it has some chance of being 2.5 months of payroll of free money if you use it if you maintain your staffing level.
I will say that the up front paperwork is pretty low overhead as long as you've got a decent handle on your bookkeeping and payroll-- and you have a banker that's interested.
Tomorrow will be 7 days, and we've heard NOTHING regarding the EIDL. I'll make a call/send an email tomorrow. I know they're swamped, but I'm a little nervous as my understanding was, if approved, $$$ should be in our business account in 3 days. :/
