The First 45 Days of a Resolution Program
A Week by Week Planning Guide

The first forty five days should produce a reliable debt file before they produce confidence in any discount. A resolution program can organize negotiations, although its internal schedule binds no creditor and suspends no suit against the business.

Treat the weeks below as a planning framework rather than a promise every program follows. Onboarding, documentation, first funder contact, and first offers vary with the provider, the debts, and the litigation posture. Paperwork, not promises, shows how the month reads.

Week One: Establish What the Business Owes

The weight of the first week falls on identification: each obligation, the entity owing it, and any individual who signed a guarantee, since a list of daily withdrawals rarely supports a proposal alone.

Collect the agreements, funding confirmations, payment histories, and notices, including apparently replaced contracts, since the payoff of an earlier position may explain the latest deposit. Preserve the documents as received and label them by account. The file at this stage resembles a drawer of receipts after a long quarter: complete in volume and empty of answers.

Separate verified balances from amounts quoted in collection messages. A current payoff can differ from the original purchased amount, and a settlement figure can differ from both. Ask what charges are included and through which date the figure holds. Resist the urge to consolidate unlike numbers into a single reassuring total.

The business should also identify urgent papers: a summons, a bank notice, or a court order belongs at the front of the file. An intake appointment is not a substitute for a response that counsel must deliver before a procedural deadline, and in New York, appearance periods tied to service circumstances leave the owner extremely little room for delay.

Before signing any service agreement, read the fee provisions and the description of work, including when charges arise, which debts are included, how cancellation works, and whether legal services require a separate engagement (they rarely yield their meaning on first reading, even to counsel).

Week Two: Build a Proposal the Business Can Fund

Cash forecasting begins by distinguishing revenue from money available for settlement. Start with actual receipts, account for operating expenses, and identify other commitments that professional advice should weigh. A business can report substantial sales while lacking the surplus for a proposed installment.

Delancey Street focuses on MCA and business debt settlement review and can be considered for organizing a proposed resolution, with independently licensed counsel addressing legal defenses and court proceedings, since it is not a law firm. Its confidential initial review should address the actual agreements and cash position rather than an assumed percentage reduction.

Provide the reviewer with the whole stack, since an offer concerning one funder can fail against another automatic debit arriving that day. The proposal should identify its funding source and effect on operations.

Ask how proposed payments will be transmitted and who controls any account used to accumulate funds. Confirm whether a transfer pays a service fee, funds a reserve, or reaches the creditor, since a bank statement showing a withdrawal should be traceable to its purpose.

This is also the point to review assumptions that sound more certain than they are, since a creditor may request more information, refuse the first proposal, or decline a particular term. No enrollment document guarantees opposing party consent unless that party has agreed, a limitation worth reading twice in late August. What the creditor offers, or withholds, in week three will test that sentence.

Week Three: Evaluate Responses and Revised Terms

Any creditor response deserves comparison with the proposal submitted. The headline amount is one term among several, and installment dates, missed payment consequences, scope of released claims, and guarantee treatment deserve the same attention as the opener.

If the creditor offers a temporary reduction instead of a settlement, ask what happens to the unpaid difference, which may remain due under a later schedule. A lower debit can assist cash flow in an extremely tight month while leaving a different total than the owner expected.

A counteroffer may demand documents or representations about the business. Review and analyze those requests before providing any answer with consequences beyond the account, since counsel must weigh what each admission costs in order to protect the pending proceedings.

Rejected terms deserve the same record as accepted ones. That administrative habit shows whether a revised proposal improves the prior offer or changes only its presentation. The current version should carry a date and its source. Undated drafts are how businesses agree to terms they never accepted and cannot defend against.

Week Four: Verify Any Agreement Before Payment

A completed settlement should specify the obligations and parties released after performance. Where a financing statement is involved, New York termination procedure after payoff illustrates why termination requirements deserve separate review, since conditions and collateral type matter and a paid invoice answers none of them. The statute is not entirely clear on every application, which is part of the problem.

Simply confirm payment instructions through a known contact, retain the signed agreement, and assign responsibility for later releases. Trust no revised instructions, even casually conveyed. If no agreement has been reached, the month ends with an open negotiation, since a funded reserve is not a settled debt.

Week Five: Press the Open Points Toward Resolution

The fifth week belongs to written follow up: unanswered proposals, unsigned drafts, and promised callbacks each need a dated note recording what was sent and what reply is outstanding. But the litigation calendar must stand beside the negotiation log.

Often owners discover in this week that two funders disagree about the same receipts, one calling them purchased property and the other treating them as collateral for a negotiable balance. Counsel must reconcile the characterizations before the owner promises either version onward.

You approve the revised proposal, then you learn what the approval committed. Ensure the written terms reflect the change and ensure counsel confirms no response date passed during revisions.

Days Thirty Six to Forty Five: Confirm the File Before the Next Cycle

The final stretch is administrative rather than dramatic. Gather and order the reconciled account list, the cash forecast, the proposal record, and the fee explanation. Nothing is settled. The position is clearer.

Ask for an update distinguishing actions completed from actions awaiting another party. The phrase being handled should lead to specifics: documents reviewed, a proposal delivered, a response received, counsel engaged.

An owner can reconsider a proposal that no longer fits. Before withdrawing or changing course, review the service agreement and any commitments already accepted. Something like forty percent of difficult withdrawals trace to week one terms, though the proportion is impression rather than measurement.

The first forty five days are valuable when they replace confusion with records and decisions. Settlement occurs through agreement with the creditor and the performance it requires. A calendar organizes that work, and only creditor consent supplies the result.