Oh, that’s not good. 
I’m glad we applied the first morning the portal opened.
We applied through Bank of America the first day. We then got an email with a link to upload documents. Did that. Got a call asking if we had any trouble uploading documents. Said it looked like we were good to go. That was a week ago. Since then nothing. According to the small business forum on b of a many people got an email yesterday that allowed them to submit. But not us. And no one to call or email to ask why. Incredibly frustrating.
@Singswimsew , my husband has a theory that big banks like BA, etc… have a lot more bureaucratic bs to wade through. And how delightful that they’ve already run out of money.
My D applied for the $10,000 for her boss but they didn’t apply for the PPP. They haven’t heard anything back. Anyone get the 10,000 loan yet?
@mom60 they changed it to $1,000 per employee. $10,000 max. We applied but haven’t heard anything.
Just received this email about the PPP loan:
"The loan will be closed remotely through email and SMS text message. Please send your mobile phone number for receiving SMS text messages to this email address: xxx
Please respond promptly as the SBA loan approval may expire if the loan is not closed in a timely manner. Be sure to add your Loan Record Number."
Glad to see that things seem to be moving forward.
I’m still hung up on “Not all of your documents are present.” But no clue as to what documents are missing. I had uploaded everything they asked for but did it in one big scan. Thinking that might be the problem I separated everything out and uploaded each document separately. Then on some forum I read that if you changed the name of the document when you uploaded it might not work. Since I had added our company name to the title of each uploaded document I went back in and changed all the names. I am at a loss as to what to do next. This is Bank of America. And there is no one to call or contact to ask.
Since we started the process on the first day it was available it’s possible that we are included in the amount that the bank is seeking from the SBA and we just have to fix the paperwork. Or we may be shut out because they won’t tell us what’s wrong with what we have submitted.
That’s the worst part of all this, that there’s no one to talk to! So frustrating.
Agree. When I submitted ours, the bank sent an email asking us to attach documents and “sign” on docusign. I did - immediately. Got a confirmation from docusign that it was all “complete” and there was nothing else I could enter, click, select, push, whatever. The next day, I got an email from the bank stating they were still waiting for our documents and signature… dozens of calls and emails later (most of which said conflicting things), I finally got a supervisor who was able to go into their system, find our documents with the reference # docusign gave me, pull them from one document to another internal document and go from there. Very frustrating. And if that had meant our application was too late to get funded it would have been doubly frustrating.
Our SBA loan money appeared in our account late this afternoon; my husband received an email which made his check the account! No stimulus checks, but at least this came.
You don’t have a lender at your bank? I’ve gotten emails from a specific lender, who gave me access to a portal and told me my loan documents would be finalized soon (holding my breath until then).
I’m curious how you initiated the process if you don’t have a contact.
This varies hugely by bank. The two banks where I have checking accounts - Bank of America and Synovus - did the PPP loans at a central location. The local bankers had no contact with, knowledge of or ability to help with them. You HAD to deal with the online centralized location through the website. You initiated the process by clicking a link on their website.
The small, local bank I found that was doing community loans also had a website link - no personal service there, either. That was part of the PPP requirement, that applications be online.
I did get an initial email about the program and I talked to my contact at my TD Bank branch. This was on the first Friday morning, April 6. He said he would let me know when I could apply. Monday morning I hadn’t heard anything. I emailed and called. Nothing. Then I happened to look at my account online and there was a notice that the online portal was open! So I applied online. I got another email from my local banker stating that it wasn’t the branch that would process the application so he couldn’t help me. I emailed him with one question and he never responded. I was able to talk to my CPA who helped me. He was already approved, on April 9!
I called the TD Bank Small Business line on April 16 and a woman read from a script that stated they couldn’t say how long approval would take. Later that day, I got an email that the loan was approved.
So I never had any assistance from my local bank.
We have a long-standing relationship with our bank. However, the bank said do not call, text, email, write or visit the bank with questions about PPP and they weren’t kidding.
QuickBooks just YESTERDAY had a notice on QuickBooks Pro that they were ready to start accepting applications but that the SBA was not accepting any more at this time! What an epic fail on their part.
@MaineLonghorn that stinks about your banker. I just talked with a friend who owns a small (we call them micro) business and he uses TD Bank and was furious that he could never find someone to talk to. At first I thought I would be out of luck, dealing with a small community bank, because I thought all the money would be going to big banks and big clients (hello, “Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse”!?!?) But in the end, I think smaller banks were able to handle individual customers better.
@surfcity, oh, I’m sure small banks did a better job. I think big banks had to run everything through their legal department and that gummed up the works. Whenever DH and I have tried to sign a contract with a large company, it’s been a nightmare because their legal department doesn’t want to alter their standard terms even when they’re not acceptable. We’ve had to turn down a few jobs because of that.
I just received the PPP loan documents by email and signed them electronically. The SIP order is not all bad - it meant I didn’t have to make a trip to the bank to sign like I usually do!
Remember my question about Wells Fargo? In today’s news:
Lawsuit alleges Wells Fargo unfairly shuffled Paycheck Protection Program applications - The lawsuit filed on behalf of small business owners on Sunday alleges that Wells Fargo unfairly prioritized businesses seeking large loan amounts, while the government’s small business agency has said that PPP loan applications would be processed on a first-come, first-served basis.
(The problem I reported upthread was that it appeared that WFB had “run out” of money before it even opened up a portal on its website to accept applications.)
The PPP funds were direct deposited into our business account last night. Whoo hoo!
My CPA was very helpful. He said that technically, this money is not supposed to be taxed. So whatever money a company gives out as payroll should be deducted. So say you get $100,000 in funds (not what we got, ha). You pay salaries in that amount over 8 weeks and the employees have to pay taxes on that and you pay withheld taxes (which the government has already given you). So you should be able to deduct $100,000 as a business expense. BUT the CPA said he really expects the government to disallow that deduction in this case.
So worst case, whatever money we’re given is like getting a big project from a client without doing any of the work. Best case, you can deduct that amount as a business expense.
It just makes me happy that I coordinated all of this, because DH is really the person who does the lion’s share of the work in our firm. The amount of money I brought in is equal to a pretty darned big engineering design project fee. 