How much can a company borrow on its turnover?

“How much can we borrow?” is the first question nearly every director asks, and the honest answer is that it depends on numbers a lender will calculate for you. The good news is that the calculation isn’t secret. Once you know how a cash flow lender reads your account, you can estimate the answer yourself and walk into the conversation with realistic expectations.

Step one: verified deposits, not headline turnover

Your accountant might describe your company as turning over $1.8 million a year. A cash flow lender won’t start from that number. It starts from what actually lands in your business bank account, usually over the last three to twelve months, and then removes anything that isn’t trading income:

• transfers in from your own savings or other accounts;
• loan advances and line-of-credit draws;
• money injected by directors or shareholders;
• refunds, reversals and one-off asset sales.

What’s left is verified deposits, averaged per month. Many lenders now gather statements through secure read-only connections, which speeds this up and means the figures can’t be mistyped. The Consumer Data Right framework, which covers open banking in Australia, is one route some lenders use.

Step two: the size-to-deposits pattern

For short-term unsecured lending, offers often fall somewhere around half to one and a half months of verified deposits. That’s an observed pattern across the market, not a regulation, and individual lenders sit at different points depending on term, industry and their own appetite. Longer terms and lines of credit can follow different logic again.

Here are three illustrative companies, each with clean conduct unless noted:

Company (illustrative)	Verified monthly deposits	Existing repayments	Likely range on this pattern
Café, 3 years trading	$55,000	None	Around $25,000 to $80,000
Electrical contractor, 18 months	$140,000	$6,000 a month	Trimmed below the full range
Online store, 7 months, two recent dishonours	$90,000	None	Lower end, fewer lenders

The borrowing power calculator runs this pattern on your own numbers, including the trimming for short history and existing debt.

Step three: what pushes the number up or down

Once the starting range is set, the assessor adjusts. The main levers are:

Upward: two or more years of trading; steady or rising deposits; a healthy average balance; no dishonours; a clear purpose that will generate income; a low-risk industry.

Downward: less than a year of trading; deposits that are falling or wildly uneven; frequent days in overdraft; dishonoured or returned payments; several existing short-term loans; an unresolved ATO debt; a purpose that doesn’t obviously produce cash.

Conduct over the last three months tends to carry the most weight. A rough patch two years ago, now behind you, matters far less than three bounced payments last month. Our bank statements explainer goes through the flags one by one.

Step four: the affordability test

Even after sizing, the lender checks that repayments fit. A common way is to look at the proposed repayment as a share of deposits and alongside existing debits, then ask whether the account’s lowest points could still absorb it. If not, the amount comes down or the term gets longer. That’s the serviceability test, and it’s the step where many applications are reshaped rather than declined.

How to borrow closer to the top of your range

You can’t change your history, but you can present it well:

1. Supply statements for every business account, so all genuine income counts.
2. Keep personal spending out of the business account in the months before applying.
3. Disclose existing loans and any ATO arrangement upfront.
4. Ask for an amount tied to a specific purpose and timeframe.
5. If you’re carrying several small loans, consider refinancing business debt into one before adding more.

If turnover alone won’t reach the amount you need, property usually changes the maths entirely. The secured business loans hub explains how lenders size those.

A note on multiple accounts and payment platforms

Many companies now take money through more than one channel: a main business account, a separate account for card settlements, an online marketplace payout and perhaps a buy-now-pay-later provider. If a lender only sees one of those, your verified deposits can look a fraction of what they really are.

Before applying, list every account and platform the business is paid through. Supply statements or exports for all of them, and add a line explaining how money moves between them, for example “card settlements land in account two and are swept to the main account each Friday”. That single sentence can stop an assessor double-counting transfers or, worse, missing a whole stream of income. It’s one of the simplest ways to make sure the figure you’re offered reflects the business you actually run.

Get a real figure for your company

An estimate is useful; a real figure is better. Tell us your deposits, existing loans and what the money is for in our 60-second enquiry and a member of our lending team will come back with an honest range. There’s no credit check to ask, we don’t pass your details to a list of other lenders, and accurate answers mean the number we give you on the first call is one you can rely on. Find out your figure.