No Doc Business Loans: The Ultimate Guide

If you need fast business financing without the hassle, then you might want to consider no doc business loans. We’re talking business financing that takes few or no documents to get through the application process. 

These small business loans do exist, and they can be a huge asset to small business owners.

In this guide, we’ll walk through all the no doc business loans available and what you need to know about each.

There are many types of business loans that you can apply for without providing any documents—or with only a few documents. Here’s a summary of your best options:

Let’s break down the details.

When you search for no doc business loans, odds are the first type of business loan that will come up is a merchant cash advance (MCA).

Essentially, merchant cash advance companies advance you a sum of money by purchasing your future credit card sales. This means that to repay this advance, you’ll allow the lender to take a fixed percentage of your credit and debit card sales each day until you’ve repaid the total sum, plus interest.

Merchant cash advances are the most accessible financing products on the market. They really are no doc business loans.

First, you’ll only need to provide your Social Security number, address, and tax ID to confirm your credit score. Then, you’ll need to sync your bank statements or your credit card processing statements to verify the revenue volume you’re bringing in on average.

It’s important to note that MCAs are the most expensive financing option on the market. These lenders calculate your interest in terms of a factor rate, which is often much higher than other business funding options. Plus, daily repayments mean your business’s cash flow could be seriously affected.

In general, merchant cash advances should be avoided if you can qualify for a different financing solution with lower rates and better terms.

If you’re intent on pursuing a merchant cash advance, however, here are a few lenders you might consider working with:

Next up on our list of top no doc business loans are short-term loans. Short-term loans are like the term loans you know well, but with a few key differences.

These are lump-sum loans that get repaid over a set period of time with regular payments, including interest.

However, short-term loans have, as their name implies, shorter terms. Terms typically last for three to 18 months, and you’ll repay the capital with daily or weekly repayments. Loan amounts are usually smaller (e.g. up to $250,000) and interest rates range from 10% to a lot higher—even up to 100%.

Short-term loans are particularly useful when you have working capital needs, or one-off business investments or expenses you need to make. In addition, these can be great no doc business loan options for startups, as well as businesses with average or bad credit—as they’re often easier to qualify for compared to longer-term loans.

With this in mind, however, short-term loans aren’t true no doc business loans. You’ll need some paperwork to apply to short-term loans, but what you need to provide will be very minimal.

Here’s the list of what you might need:

• Tax ID
• Social Security number
• Bank statements
• Credit score
• Personal and business tax returns

Let’s look at a few short-term lenders that could work for your business:

With business lines of credit, you’ll have access to a pool of funds that you can tap into for any business-related expenses. You only pay interest on the amount you draw, and once you pay it back with interest, your credit line gets refilled to its original amount.

Although there are different types of business lines of credit, short-term lines of credit will have minimal documentation requirements and be the easiest to qualify for. These lines of credit, however, will also offer smaller line amounts over shorter repayment periods and at higher rates—ranging from 10% to 80%.

That said, here’s a list of the documents you’ll need to apply:

• Driver’s license
• Voided business check
• Bank statements
• Credit score
• Personal tax returns

To find a short-term line of credit, you might start with the following lenders:

Our final close-to-no doc business loan is invoice financing.

Invoice financing essentially gives you an advance on your outstanding invoices, freeing up your cash flow. Invoice financing companies advance you a lump sum amount that’s typically a large percentage of the value of the outstanding invoice in question—around 85%.

Invoice financing is a great option for borrowers with less-than-stellar credit, little time in business, and in need of fast, accessible funding, as your eligibility for this financing largely depends on the details of your outstanding invoices and customers’ payment history (and less on your own financials).

What’s more, the application process with invoice financing is simple. Really, the most important part of your application will be your outstanding invoices.

Here’s your list of everything you might need to provide for the application:

• Driver’s license
• Voided business check
• Bank statements
• Credit score
• Outstanding invoices

Now that you know all about no doc business loans and the options available to you, you might be wondering what the benefits of this type of loan are over a traditional bank loan.

There are several distinct advantages to no doc business loans, including:

With alternative lenders, who offer these types of loans, you’ll find that most of them are operating online—meaning their applications are online as well.

By using technology to process your loan application and algorithms to underwrite the loan itself, these lenders don’t need to see as many documents from the borrower.

Instead, these no doc business loans are available by just syncing your business bank account or accounting software. Then the lender’s technology gets to work and collects the information the lender will use to determine if you qualify for their financing product.

No doc business loans can be acquired much faster than bank loans.

That’s because alternative lenders are not traditional banking institutions—meaning they’re not subject to the same government regulations as the big banks are. Banks make loans using money from personal checking and savings accounts and thus are heavily regulated on how they can lend out their customers’ money. Alternative, non-bank lenders get money from other sources—like hedge funds, accredited investors, or secured lines of credit.

This is another reason why alternative lenders don’t require as much paperwork—like a business plan or full financials.

While a bank needs to see everything, an alternative lender only needs to see specific documentation that they deem important.

The technology aspect also plays a big role in the speed of alternative lenders. With efficient underwriting programs and highly automated applications, alternative lenders can process more small business loan applications in less time.

On the other hand, of course, the convenience of no doc business loans comes with a (literal) cost. Here is the biggest drawback to opting for this type of small business loan:

Banks charge lower interest rates because they’re so selective with their borrowers. If they only lend to business owners with long and successful track records, they can be more confident that they’ll get their money back.

Alternative lenders don’t spend as much time looking at paperwork to see if you’re a qualified borrower. Therefore, they won’t have as good of a sense of your revenue, cash flow, and general financial stability. And in general, alternative lenders accept entrepreneurs with shorter business histories, lower credit scores, and less proven revenues and cash flow.

In order to balance the scales out and compensate for the risk of lending to you, alternative lenders are forced to charge higher interest rates. That way, even if they only get a portion of the loan repayments, they’ll end up getting a fair amount of their money back.

With no doc business lenders, your interest rate depends on typical factors like credit score, annual revenue, and time in business.

But these lenders are more lenient with their requirements, meaning you should expect to see higher interest rates on loans that are easy to apply for and require very few documents.

While very few business funding options require absolutely no documentation from the potential borrower, there are several options that only need very limited documentation. In many cases, you’ll be able to simply sync your bank account, provide some basic information on yourself and your business, and find out if you’re approved.

When it comes to these business loans, though, you need to be careful. Easy-to-access business loans can have exorbitantly high interest rates and uncomfortable repayment periods.

If you can stand to handle a more intensive application period and are slightly more qualified, you should look at your other options, including traditional term loans, longer-term lines of credit, or SBA loans instead.