What a categoriser sees, and what the business is doing.
One SME file, read two ways. The transactions are identical. The conclusion a lender would reach from them is not.
Run this on your own bookInflow is not revenue.
A merchant categoriser counts what arrived. It has no view on where the money came from or what it obliges the business to repay, so loan proceeds, owner injections and internal transfers all read as trading income.
Net surplus reads $516,820 naively and $174,200 once economic role is applied. A serviceability assessment built on the first figure overstates capacity by roughly three times.
Nothing in the data was missing and nothing was wrong. Every transaction was present, correctly dated and correctly valued. What had never been established was what each flow does.
The same number means different things in different businesses.
A threshold set across a whole portfolio has to be wrong somewhere. Read against how a business actually operates, three of the most common red flags resolve without a phone call.
34 negative balance days in 180
Scores 25 out of 100
Normal for a contractor waiting on progress claims. Alarming for a cafe settling daily.
Receipts $1.41m against declared revenue $2.4m
Flag a discrepancy, chase the borrower
5% retention is withheld on every progress claim. Explained, no action.
Trading collapses across December
Sharp deterioration
Industry wide construction shutdown. Expected.
The downside is bounded at zero.
Your scorecard keeps running. Ours runs alongside, and the more conservative view wins.
One cell can change, and only in the conservative direction.
Losses avoided against margin forgone, on loans already written. No simulation, no waiting.
Bring a file you already funded.
We will read it the way this case was read, and you can compare the result with what your own process concluded at the time.