The required documents depend on the type of business you run and also on the amount requested.
Startups
Haven't started trading yet? iwoca simply asks for your business plan to help us understand your business and your plans for the business.
Your business plan can consist of:
- Your business idea
- Business goals
- Future orders/projects
- Financial forecasts
Sole traders and limited companies
Bank Statements
This helps paint a broad picture of the business' day to day activity. These should clearly show the incomings and outgoings of the business, as well as the outstanding balance at the end of the month.
We'd only ask you to provide bank statements between 3 to 6 months.
For sole trader applications, we might additionally ask you to provide your personal bank statements. We need these to verify your income and expenses. These will help us to ensure we are lending responsibly.
VAT Returns
These provide an insight into the business operations as they include additional information with regards to your sales, costs, purchases and other trading activities. These can be downloaded from the HMRC website or extracted from your accountancy software.
If you need help downloading your returns from the HMRC website, a quick step by step guide on how to get this done can be found here.
For sole trader applications, we might ask you for your latest Self Assessment tax return as well. We need this to verify your income. This will help us to ensure we are lending responsibly.
Company accounts
Limited companies in the UK are required to prepare annual accounts for Companies House and HMRC every year. This report highlights the financial activity of the organisation. The full statutory accounts should include:
- A profit and loss account
- A balance sheet
- A directors' report
- Name and signature of the company director
Ideally, we'd like to see your full company accounts not the abbreviated version.
We understand that small businesses can be seasonal. So if you have any other information that may highlight the strength of your business, we'd be more than happy to take a look.
If you have any questions just send us a message by clicking the icon in the bottom right of your screen.