Short answer: yes. A cleaning company or a pest control company can get funding with bad credit, because the two products that fit this trade best — a working capital advance and invoice factoring — carry no minimum credit score at Routebook Capital. The decision is made on your business bank statements, not on your FICO. What follows is what that actually means, where the limits are, and what an underwriter is reading instead of your score.
Why your credit score matters less than you think here
A credit score is a prediction about a person’s personal borrowing. A route business is a machine that bills the same customers every month. Those two things are only loosely connected. An owner can have a 540 from a divorce, a medical bill or a failed first business, and still run a pest company with four hundred accounts on quarterly plans that renew without a sales call. The score says one thing; the bank statements say another. Working capital underwriting is built to read the statements.
That is also why “no minimum FICO” is not the same as “credit is ignored.” Credit is reviewed. It is simply not a cutoff on working capital or factoring. A low score may affect the term or the amount; it does not by itself produce a decline.
What an underwriter reads instead of the score
Five things, and it helps to know them before you send your statements:
- Deposit frequency. A cleaning company deposits often: card autopay batches from residential clients, checks from property managers, cash from move-out cleans. A pest company deposits in waves around its quarterly billing. Many deposit days a month reads as a working route.
- Average daily balance. More important than the top line. An account that never dips to zero between payroll Fridays is a stronger file than a bigger account that lives at the bottom.
- Recurring billing. This is the part lenders outside this trade miss. Monthly janitorial contracts and quarterly pest plans are revenue you already know is coming. We read them as forward revenue. Tell the underwriter what share of your book is on a plan.
- NSFs. A few in 90 days is normal in a trade where payroll goes out weekly and commercial accounts pay slowly. A pattern of them is a different story.
- Your slowest month. The payment is sized against the floor of the statement window, not the average. If your pest season has a shape, send four months instead of three.
Which products stay open with bad credit, and which don’t
Working capital ($10,000 to $2,000,000, 3 to 18 months, funded in 24 hours) has no minimum credit score. It needs $15,000 a month in business bank deposits, 6 months in business and a U.S. business bank account. This is the product for hiring a crew, replacing a truck, buying the season’s chemical, or closing a small route purchase this week.
Invoice factoring also has no minimum credit score, because the credit being underwritten is your customer’s, not yours. If your cleaning company invoices office buildings on net-30 or your pest company bills commercial accounts on net-45, those invoices can be advanced at up to 90% within 24 hours. Residential customers paying by card at the time of service cannot be factored.
The credit-qualified products have floors: a line of credit needs 600+, a term loan 650+, and SBA 7(a) 680+. If you are below those today, working capital is the path, and a clean year of payments on it is the most direct way to get to the cheaper products later.
What bad credit does change
Three things, honestly. First, the amount may be sized more conservatively — approvals generally land between 75% and 150% of one month’s deposits, and a weaker credit file tends toward the lower end. Second, the term may be shorter. Third, a credit-qualified product is off the table until the score recovers. What it does not change: the speed (offer in about four business hours, funding in 24), the documents (application plus three months of statements), or the contract (two pages).
How to make a bad-credit file as strong as it can be
- Send statements downloaded from the bank as PDFs, not screenshots.
- Send four months if your business has a seasonal shape, so the underwriter sees the floor and the recovery.
- Know your recurring share: how much of last month’s billing came from customers on a plan or contract.
- Disclose any open advances up front. Structuring around them is routine; discovering them is not.
- Put a phone number on the application you actually answer. Routebook Capital does not run automated email sequences; a person calls you.
Submitting the application does not affect your credit. On working capital and factoring, the file is decided on your statements. A credit pull happens only if you move forward on a credit-qualified product, and you are told before it does.