What You Need to Know For Your 24th Week of PPP

Hey, It’s Karine with 24hr Bookkeeper I am gonna talk to you a little bit more about the PPP and some of the things that you need to think about when you are going to gather the last pieces that you need to put together your forgiveness portion. We picked 24 weeks because that is the extension of the PPP period that was granted. It does not mean you have to wait 24 weeks, but just so you know, we are going to assume that some of you might wait till the end of the period to go ahead and apply. So that’s the reasoning behind the title.

Ok, The first thing you should think about is gathering your documents. I will include a link to the PDF that is online, otherwise you can just google PPP forgiveness application. It should be an 11 page PDF document, and on page 10, there is a list of all the payroll and non-payroll documents that you should have in order to complete the forgiveness application. Also we did provide you, way back when, (when PPP first started) a spreadsheet, which I will also include the link in the comments. That allows you to manage your expenses, your payroll, and non-payroll costs for the PPP loan. We’re always trying to track them for forgiveness purposes. So, make sure that when you go to the spreadsheet, go ahead and fill out all the information by week. We only did eight weeks, but you can always add columns and extend it make sure to record all of those costs and try to get to the PPP amount. That’ll help also gather what kind of documents you need based on what categories that you would have put in all you of your costs. Something to think about.

I’ve had a lot of questions related to the exemption portion when it comes to the employees. If you started with a different number of employees in which you ended in your PPP period, don’t freak out. Some people are worried that they will not get part of that employees wage or payroll related cost forgiven, and that is actually not true. There is some exemptions that you can look into, and those are on the directions for the PPP. Those relate to whether you had an employee who was fired, someone who resigned, maybe you had to offer a severance package, something like that. Check those out because you will still have the opportunity to have your PPP portion forgiven for that employee.

Now, you might want to think about waiting for the whole 24 weeks. If you do or don’t need to, versus maybe applying for forgiveness sooner. So, I think that it’s gonna really be up you to decide. I think there’s a lot of pros and con.s I’m probably not going to catch them all ,but just some few things to think about. I think the benefit to applying as soon as you’ve met your total PPP loan amount is that you know that you can be forgiven. I think we kind of know that the rules change regularly right now with the SBA, and based on the way we know them to be you already have all the information. So, it’s just a matter of saying these are my costs that are pretty clear, here’s the application, and here’s the information I need to provide, I’m gonna go ahead and take care of it!

I think that if you wait, naturally we’re all guilty of this, time goes by and then we kind of forget. Or maybe don’t have the information or can’t find it. If you’re at good record-keeping, you’re maintaining ongoing, that’s perfect you can totally wait for the end of the period. A benefit to potentially waiting is for example some of the things that they’re talking about is, if you have any PPP loan under one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, that loan might be forgiven completely, and you don’t even have to do anything. So, you could wait, and find out if that is something you qualify for. Again, it’s really gonna be up to you to decide. If you kind of want to do it, get it taken care of, and move on, or just wait until the end of the year or the 24 weeks, whichever comes first, to start applying for that.

Keep in mind too that the lender has, I think, 60 to 90 days to approve that with the SBA. There is some time related to that. There was a lot of changes to the extension of the period and the 60/40 payroll versus non-payroll cost that was changed from the 75/25.

I’ve also been asked who’s really going to help with the application. I am NOT a lender. I can’t speak for all the lenders, but from my experience, I don’t think that you’re going to get a lender to actually complete the application process for you or the application itself. You can talk to your CPA or tax professional, they might be willing to help you. Except that, if you’re putting it in somebody else’s hands, depending on what happens, you’re still responsible for that. If you fill out the application yourself, you could probably talk to your lender, and they will likely review the information with you prior to submitting it to the SBA. So, give it a swing.

We do also have a video on completing the PPP application. We will include that link also. So, check it out, and do remember that it is not easy. It’s still ever-changing. Lots of information, but there’s a lot of resources out there. Hopefully, the three that I mentioned will be a good start to kick you off on that forgiveness portion. Thanks for watching and you know, let us know if you have any comments, anything specific you want to hear about related to the PPP, and we’ll go ahead and add that information in there! Have a great day!