🧭 Overview
Lenders don’t want raw spreadsheets; they want a clear, credible story about how they get repaid. This guide shows you how to turn a detailed business debt schedule into a concise, one‑page lender pack that highlights cash coverage, covenant headroom, and upcoming decision points. You’ll learn which elements of your debt schedule template to surface, how to frame financing and debt decisions in plain language, and how to connect your schedule to 13‑week headroom and long‑term forecasts. We’ll also show where to reference related analyses – like lease vs loan comparisons and fee modelling – so lenders can dive deeper without losing the thread.
✅ Before You Begin
Before drafting a lender pack, confirm your underlying models are solid. Your debt service schedule in Excel (or modelling platform) should cover all facilities: term loans, revolvers, leases, vendor finance, and any structured instruments. Each facility needs clean logic for draws, repayments, interest, fees, and covenants, ideally aligned with the fee modelling approach we covered earlier.
You’ll also need:
Finally, be clear on the audience: different lenders, rating agencies, or private credit funds will care about different metrics. Decide up front what story you’re telling and what decision you’re supporting – renewal, increase, refi, or covenant amendment.
🧩 Step-by-Step Instructions
1️⃣ Step 1: Define the Core Story and Objectives
Start by defining the purpose of the lender pack in one sentence: “We are seeking X to achieve Y, with Z level of cash coverage and covenant headroom.” This anchors every chart and table you include. Next, summarise your current financing and debt position: total debt, mix of facilities, weighted average cost, and average remaining term.
Decide which narrative frame fits best: stability (we’re solid, renew us), growth (we’re investing, here’s how we protect cash), or transition (we’re refinancing, here’s the de‑risked structure). Each frame emphasises different outputs from your business debt schedule – for example, stability focuses on coverage and amortisation; growth highlights new facilities and their impact; transition leans on fee, OID, and prepayment analysis.
Finally, pick the 3-5 metrics that matter most for this audience: DSCR, fixed‑charge coverage, leverage, liquidity headroom, and perhaps a simple lease vs loan comparison if structure is in play.
2️⃣ Step 2: Extract the Right Tables from Your Debt Schedule
With the story in mind, extract only the most relevant parts of your debt schedule template. Typically, this includes:
- Opening and closing balances by facility
- Scheduled principal and interest
- Total debt service by period
- Key fees and prepayment penalties were relevant
Aggregate these into quarterly or semi‑annual views for the main page, while keeping monthly detail available in an appendix. Ensure totals tie back to your financial statements and 13‑week cash forecast.
As you simplify, keep labels lender‑friendly: “Term loan A – amortising”, “Revolver – working capital”, “Lease portfolio – vehicles”. If you use vendor finance for business, call it out clearly and show how it compares to equivalent bank debt. The goal is a single, trustworthy source of truth that any credit analyst can follow without reverse‑engineering macros.
3️⃣ Step 3: Layer in Cash Coverage and Headroom Views
Next, turn your tables into a cash coverage story. Combine your business debt schedule with EBITDA, operating cash flow, or free cash flow, depending on the covenants in play. Show, by period, how many turns of coverage you have relative to the required thresholds.
Integrate your 13‑week headroom model: highlight minimum cash, revolver availability, and any planned bulges (e.g., capex peaks, seasonal working capital stretches). Make it obvious when and where headroom tightens – lenders appreciate proactive transparency.
If you’ve done specific working capital or collections optimisation work, reference those analyses or dashboards. For asset‑heavy or project‑based businesses, link to capex and project evaluation models that demonstrate how new investments behave in cash terms. The aim is to show that your financing and debt sit within a disciplined, cash‑first planning framework, not an isolated spreadsheet.
4️⃣ Step 4: Add Supporting Analyses and Scenario Views
With the base case clear, add 2-3 high‑impact scenarios. Common examples: downside trading performance, higher interest rates, and delayed refinancing. Use existing scenario logic from your investment and budgeting models, so lenders see consistency.
For each scenario, show the impact on coverage ratios, minimum cash & coverage headroom, and any covenant breaches. Where structure is a decision point, include concise outputs from your lease vs loan analysis or vendor vs. bank comparisons. When fees and OID are material, surface their cash impact and effective rate differences.
Keep scenario presentation tight: one chart, one table, one paragraph of commentary per scenario. If deeper analysis is needed – for example, around M&A integration or project evaluation – point to supporting packs in related workflows. This keeps the main lender pack focused while still demonstrating rigour.
5️⃣ Step 5: Package, Explain and Operationalise the Pack
Finally, package the lender pack as a repeatable artefact. Start with a one‑page summary: key ask, facilities overview, coverage metrics, and near‑term headroom. Follow with sections for base case detail, scenarios, and appendices.
Write commentary in straightforward, non‑jargon language. Explain how cash coverage is maintained, how financing and debt will evolve over the next 12-36 months, and what triggers would cause you to revisit the structure. When relevant, reference upcoming refinancing or restructuring decisions and the supporting analyses you’ll use (e.g. lease vs loan, fee models, capex evaluations).
Operationalise by tying the lender pack to your monthly reporting cadence. Use the same business debt schedule and cash forecasts for internal boards, external investors and lenders. Over time, updating the pack should be a routine part of your close process, not a fire drill before each review.
💡 Tips, Edge Cases & Gotchas
Avoid overloading the pack with raw exports from your debt service schedule in Excel – it’s tempting, but it obscures the message. Instead, keep detailed tabs for internal use and summarise only what lenders need to see.
Be upfront about tight headroom periods. Lenders respond better to a clear plan (e.g., working capital actions, capex deferrals, structure changes) than to surprises. Where vendor financing or structured leases carry unusual terms, explain them briefly and show their cash behaviour alongside bank debt.
If you operate across multiple entities or currencies, clearly separate local‑currency schedules from consolidated views.
Finally, keep ownership clear: nominate a single person responsible for the pack and model, with change logs and version history to avoid “which file is the latest?” confusion – especially during M&A or refinancing processes.
📊 Example / Quick Illustration
A multi‑site healthcare group is rolling term loans and equipment leases into a single, cleaner structure. Historically, each facility lived in its own spreadsheet. To support a refinancing, the CFO consolidates everything into a unified business debt schedule, then builds a lender pack that shows total debt by facility, maturity ladder, and quarterly debt service.
They add 13‑week headroom charts to illustrate how working capital and capex interact with debt flows, plus a scenario where elective procedure volumes drop 10%. Supporting analyses from lease vs loan and vendor vs. bank comparisons sit in the appendix.
The lender sees a clear, disciplined approach to financing and debt, approves the new structure, and agrees to lighter ongoing reporting – because the pack makes it easy to track coverage and covenant compliance in one place.
🚀 Next Steps
If you don’t yet have a standard lender pack, start by building one around your current facilities. Use your existing debt schedule template and 13‑week cash forecast as the backbone. Then create a one‑page summary with the structure described here and review it internally with your finance and executive teams before sharing externally.
Once the first version is live, embed it into your close and planning workflows. As you adopt more advanced practices – such as structured lease vs loan comparisons, richer fee modelling, and disciplined investment evaluation – plug those outputs into the same pack rather than creating new artefacts. Over time, your lender pack becomes a single, reliable window into how you manage financing and debt, strengthening trust and reducing reporting friction on both sides.
These patterns keep the structure and expectations consistent across all supporting guides in the Financing & Debt pillar.
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