We are starting on day 5 and we understand everyone's frustrations across the board. I need to remind everyone that nobody is to blame for all the chaos. A virus has caused mass panic in all aspects of our lives including this process. The biggest hurdle so far with the PPP loan process is that we have been at the mercy of the banks. Please understand we are working on the fly just like every bank is. This was NOT a planned event, and the banks are working just as hard as we are so please allow them some breathing room as well.
This is a pandemic and things change daily, sometimes by the minute and we must adjust constantly to conform. SBA issued additional guidance on what is defined as payroll just yesterday morning and now Paychex and ADP are scrambling to get their reports updated. Good news is we always believed we were correct on what the definition was, and our applications so far have been correct. Many have attempted this on their own, most used wrong payroll numbers, missed health premiums, retirement matches, their own pay, etc. This was never a "simple" calculation, and unfortunately their loans are likely underfunded. That's what we were trying to avoid.
Those of you who worried that the money would run out hopefully watched the news last night. It was announced that an additional $250B was added for funding. When President Trump was asked if that would be enough, he simply said, "we will see but if we need to fund more, we will". They were never going to let businesses fail, a virus is to blame, and people had no way of preparing for the current situation we are all in.
We promised to do our best to have those done that came in right away no later than 5-7 days. The clock started Friday evening and today is day 5. As I explained to our daughter, imagine an ER staff of 30 having 500 patients all come in at the same time. Our entire staff is working nonstop to fulfill that promise. We have completed almost 350 and that is with going back and forth with many banks who were not prepared for this. Some didn't have their processes in place, but many are ramping up now. Several don't understand why we are involved, because "the calculation is so simple". However, we know that it is more than uploading a payroll report...much more if you want to do it right. Now we are hearing more and more "oh my gosh this is so organized" . A comment from a local Credit Union, "Ben and Heather, you owe your accountants something nice for making this such an easy process". Yet we have had some banks REFUSING to work with us. Although most have changed their mind after experiencing self- prepared apps for a few days.
We have an assembly line operation putting together a complete package that has everything the bank needs. All working together on something that only came into existence 9 days ago.
We have clients just now catching wind of this asking if we can get theirs done in the next day. That is not possible right now, but we will get through this first phase and continue helping. At this point banks don't know exactly how the funding will work or when the money will be available.
I have asked everyone to exercise patience and continue to do so. Have we steered anyone in the wrong direction thus far? I don't think so. If we have, believe me when I say, we certainly didn't intend to! As always, we are only here to help you and ask that you trust us while we continue to work on getting the most efficient processes in place and keep cranking these out.
We are all in this together and will get through it together.
