What documents do you need for EFTPOS or revenue-based finance?

For EFTPOS or revenue-based finance, the core documents are simple: settlement reports from your terminal or payment gateway, the business bank statements those settlements land in, your ABN and entity details, and photo ID for each owner. Add a list of any existing advances and your ATO position, and most small applications are complete.

That’s lighter than a traditional bank loan, which is part of the appeal. But “light” doesn’t mean “none”, and the difference between a same-week answer and a fortnight of back-and-forth is usually a missing report or an unexplained daily debit.

Why are the documents different from a normal business loan?

A standard business loan looks backwards at your profit. A card-based advance looks at the stream of takings that will repay it. business.gov.au’s guide to applying for a business loan notes that “documentation requirements vary between loans”, and this is a good example. When the repayment comes out of daily card sales, the provider cares most about how reliable those sales are.

That’s why terminal reports sit at the top of the list, and why things like a detailed business plan or two years of tax returns often don’t appear at all for smaller advances. Our page on revenue-based and EFTPOS finance explains how the sizing works.

What’s on the usual checklist?

Document	Why the lender wants it	Where to find it
Terminal or gateway settlement reports	Shows gross card takings day by day and week by week	Your merchant portal or payment gateway dashboard
Business bank statements	Confirms settlements arrive and shows other regular debits	Internet banking, usually as PDF exports
ABN and entity details	Identifies who is borrowing: sole trader, company or trust	The ABN Lookup record and your company or trust documents
Photo ID for each owner or director	Identity checks for everyone who will sign	Driver licence or passport
Existing finance details	Shows what’s already being collected from your takings	Statements from current providers
ATO position	Tax debt affects how settlements might be disrupted	Your ATO online services or your tax agent
Recent BAS (sometimes)	Cross-checks turnover against what’s been reported	Your accounting software or tax agent
Lease (sometimes)	Confirms how long you can trade from the site	Your signed lease and any renewal options

How should you send them?

Format matters more than people expect. A few habits that keep an application moving:

• Send complete statements, not excerpts. A lender wants every page, including the ones with nothing interesting on them, so the opening and closing balances line up.
• Use original PDF exports. Screenshots and photos of a screen are hard to read and often have to be requested again.
• Name files clearly. Something like “terminal-settlements-jan-to-jun” saves the assessor guessing what each file is.
• Cover the same months across every document. If your terminal reports run January to June, your bank statements should too.
• Keep one folder. When the provider asks a follow-up question, you’ll have the answer in seconds rather than hunting through emails.

None of this is complicated, but it’s the difference between an assessor reading your file once and reading it three times.

Which document do owners most often forget?

The gross takings report. Many owners send a summary of what landed in the bank and assume it’s the same thing. It isn’t.

Your bank statement shows settlements after merchant fees, refunds and chargebacks, and after any split-settlement deductions from an existing advance. The provider wants to see the gross figure too, so it can understand your true sales and how much is already committed. Most merchant portals let you export a daily or monthly takings report; look for a “transactions” or “settlements” section and choose a date range covering the months requested.

The second most common gap is the other terminal. If you also take payments through an online store, a booking platform or a second device at the market on weekends, include those reports. Leaving them out makes your business look smaller than it really is.

How should you explain your ATO position and existing advances?

Honestly, and early. The ATO’s page on firmer action says it can send garnishee notices to “suppliers of merchant card facilities” as well as to banks. A provider relying on your settlements will want to know about any tax debt, because a garnishee could compete for the same money.

The same goes for existing advances. Daily debits to another provider are visible on your bank statements within seconds of anyone looking. A short note covering each one, what’s left and when it finishes, saves a round of questions.

A simple format works well:

• Provider type: card-based advance, daily debit
• Original amount: $30k
• Remaining balance: about $8k
• Expected finish: roughly six weeks

ATO debt is considered case by case, and having a payment plan in place is often viewed more kindly than an unaddressed balance.

Does a BAS help even if it isn’t required?

Often, yes. A lodged BAS gives the provider a second, independent view of your turnover. If your terminal reports, bank statements and BAS all tell the same story, the assessment gets simpler.

If your next BAS is nearly due, it can be worth lodging before you apply. Quarterly BAS is due on 28 October, 28 February, 28 April and 28 July, according to the ATO’s lodgment and payment due dates, and monthly BAS is due on the 21st of the following month.

If you have the reports in front of you now, it takes about a minute to send a quick enquiry and have someone look at what your card sales could support.

An illustrative example

Illustrative only. A beauty salon wants $35k to fit out a second treatment room. Nearly all its revenue arrives through a counter terminal and an online booking platform that takes deposits.

The owner spends an afternoon pulling together:

1. Nine months of settlement reports from the terminal portal, exported as one file.
2. Nine months of deposit reports from the booking platform.
3. Nine months of business bank statements.
4. Photo ID for both directors and the company’s ABN details.
5. A one-paragraph note about an equipment lease on the laser machine, with the monthly amount and end date.
6. A copy of the shop lease, which has four years left plus an option.

Because the booking deposits are included, the provider sees the salon’s real takings rather than counter sales alone. Because the equipment lease is disclosed, there are no surprise questions about a monthly debit. The application moves straight to assessment. For more on how salon fit-outs are typically financed, see salon fit-out finance.

What if your paperwork is patchy?

Plenty of good businesses have messy records. A few practical fixes:

• Missing months on a portal? Most providers can request older reports from the merchant facility on your behalf, or you can ask your terminal provider for an export.
• Takings split between business and personal accounts? Explain it plainly, and start moving all settlements into the business account now.
• New terminal recently? Provide reports from both the old and new facility so the history is continuous.
• Mostly cash takings? Card-based finance may not fit. A low-doc business loan or a standard unsecured business loan sized on banked deposits could be a better match.

Reports ready? Here’s the easy part

If you’ve just exported six or nine months of settlement reports, you’ve done the heavy lifting. The next step is finding out what those takings could support, and whether card-based finance is even the best fit or something simpler would serve you better.

Enquiring takes around 60 seconds, and there’s no credit check when you first enquire. We don’t send your details to a pile of lenders, so your phone stays quiet apart from one call. A real person looks at your takings, your existing commitments and what you need the money for, then calls to talk it through. Please answer the form accurately, especially your monthly card sales, so we can match the right option first time. Our how it works page shows each step.

See what your card takings could support →