Estimates only, not a loan offer. Earnouts are not modelled. In SBA deals a seller note is often required to be on standby (no payments) for part of the loan's early life — if so, early payments are lower than shown here, but the note still counts in the stack.
Enter the purchase price, closing costs and working capital, your cash, the seller note and the target business’s cash flow — the calculator builds the sources-and-uses statement, sizes the senior loan, prices each tranche’s payment separately, and tests the combined debt service against the target’s cash flow as a DSCR. Most acquisition tools size a loan and stop. A real deal has three moving parts most tools skip: the costs and cushion that belong inside the amount you finance, the seller note as its own tranche with its own payment, and the coverage verdict on the business you are buying — whose cash flow, not yours, has to carry the stack.
General information, not financial advice, and estimates only. This tool sizes a deal’s arithmetic; it does not judge the business, the valuation or your eligibility. One scope note: v1 does not model earnouts.
A $1,500,000 purchase · $100,000 closing costs and working capital (total uses $1,600,000) · $250,000 buyer cash · $150,000 seller note at 6% over 60 months · senior loan at 10.5% over 120 months · target SDE $350,000:
The stack percentages are the deal’s shape at a glance — and the first thing a lender reads. A 15.6% cash share on an SBA acquisition is a real equity injection; deals structured with almost no buyer cash fail on structure before anyone reaches the cash-flow test.
Uses are everything the money must cover on day one: the $1,500,000 price plus the $100,000 of costs and cushion. Buyers who finance only the price discover the costs at closing, in cash they planned to keep. Sources are where the uses come from: the senior loan ($1,200,000), the seller note ($150,000) and your cash ($250,000) — the three must sum to uses exactly, and the tool enforces it by deriving the loan as the remainder. Change any source and the loan moves: add $50,000 of cash and the loan falls to $1,150,000 and the payment to about $15,517. That identity — sources equal uses, always — is the entire grammar of deal structure; everything else is choosing which source to stretch.
Sellers finance part of a price for two reasons: it closes deals their buyers’ banks would not fully fund, and a note priced below bank rates (6% against 10.5% above) cheapens the stack. But notice what the note does not do: it does not remove debt service. Its $2,899.92 lands every month alongside the senior payment, and the DSCR test charges both against the target. One structural nuance from SBA practice, stated here but not modelled: in SBA-financed deals the seller note is often required to sit on standby — no payments until the senior loan is repaid or performing — under the SOP’s equity rules. A standby note changes your early cash flow, not the sizing math; a lender will tell you if your deal requires one.
Two program facts bend this calculator’s defaults. Term: without real estate, SBA acquisition loans cap at 10 years (SOP 50 10 8) — the 120-month default is a ceiling, not a suggestion, and a 15- or 20-year quote implies real estate is in the deal. Equity injection: SBA deals expect meaningful buyer cash — the 15.6% stack share in the example is the shape lenders recognise; program eligibility itself (owner-operator rules, size standards, change-of-ownership conditions) lives in the SBA eligibility hub, which owns that subject. The coverage verdict — whether 1.53× is comfortable for your channel — is read against the thresholds on the DSCR calculator and taught in full on what is DSCR. If instead you are borrowing against a business you already own, the affordability calculator is the right tool — it tests your cash flow, where this one tests the target’s. And the generic payment engine underneath all of this is the business loan calculator.
How much do I need down to buy a business? In the worked example, $250,000 of cash on $1,600,000 of total uses — 15.6% of the project, on top of which the seller carried 9.4%. There is no universal percentage, but SBA-financed acquisitions expect a genuine equity injection, and deals presented with little or no buyer cash are the ones that stall. Enter your real cash figure; the stack shows your share immediately.
What DSCR do I need to buy a business? The common benchmark is 1.25× — the target’s cash flow covering combined debt service one and a quarter times, per lender guidance summarised by BizBuySell’s acquisitions coverage. The example deal clears it at 1.53×. Below 1.25×, expect the lender to shrink the loan, demand more cash, or both — the tool shows which lever restores coverage.
How does a seller note work in an acquisition? The seller lends you part of the price instead of taking it in cash at closing: you sign a note with its own amount, rate and term, and pay the seller monthly alongside the senior lender. Above, a $150,000 note at 6% over 60 months costs $2,899.92 a month and reduces the bank loan by exactly $150,000. In SBA deals the note may have to sit on standby — no payments for an initial period — which your lender will specify.
Estimates only, not financial advice. Sources: sources-and-uses and capital-stack methodology as implemented by PeerSense (worked example independently reproduced to the dollar), BridgeBook and ctacquisitions; SBA SOP 50 10 8 (10-year maximum maturity for non-real-estate acquisitions; seller-note standby practice); BizBuySell DSCR-for-acquisitions guidance (1.25× benchmark). Currency verified 2026-10-23.