Money arriving is the middle of this process, not the end of it. What you sign determines what the business owes for the next several years, and the terms that cause the most damage are rarely the interest rate. They are the clauses nobody read: the prepayment penalty that punishes you for doing well, the covenant that puts you in default on a ratio rather than a missed payment, the requirement to move your banking.

Then there is how the money is spent. Funds used differently from how they were described, even innocently and even for something sensible, can breach the agreement, end the relationship and in some cases have to be repaid immediately. The tracking that prevents this takes about ten minutes a month to maintain and is impossible to reconstruct afterwards.

And if the answer was no, that is also this step. A decline is information. Most businesses that secure capital were declined at least once first.

If you have been approved, have the full agreement in front of you, not the summary email, and read it before you sign rather than after. If a term is unclear, ask. Lenders expect questions and a borrower who asks none is not reassuring to them either.

If you have been declined, you need nothing except the decline notice and two weeks of willingness to ask one awkward question.