The Journal of Accountancy reported on May 10th that, “a week after opening the $28.6 billion RRF, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) said late Monday afternoon that it had begun sending out more than $2 billion in a first round of funding to restaurants, bars, and other eligible applicants.”

For the first 21 days the SBA will prioritize reviewing applications from small businesses owned by women, veterans, and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.

After the first 21 days, the SBA will fund all eligible applications on a first-come, first-served basis. Approved applicants should expect an average of 14 days for processing, review, approval, and funds distribution.

So what will this approval look like for you and your clients? The SBA will send an email with the subject “SBA Restaurant Revitalization Fund – Congratulations – Award Approved”. Enough phishers are out there that it pays to be careful, and so some recipients have ignored it because it seems too good to be true, or were suspicious of the no-reply@sba.gov email address. Remember that the SBA will not ask you for any information or provide a link for you in this email. Do not click on any links. If you have any questions, please contact the SBA’s RRF call-center support at 1-844-279-8898. The are available Monday-Friday, from 8 am – 8 pm ET.

When you log into the SBA’s RRF portal that you registered for before applying — restaurants.sba.gov — you will see, on the left-hand side, a “Status” tab. If your application was approved, it will list your award amount, SBA Number, and application status will say “SBA Decision (Approved)”.

The SBA will process the funding of the award directly to the bank account you provided during the application. Again, do not enter any bank information — this was verified during the application process and the SBA will not ask you for it again. If you have any concerns, please call their support line at 1-844-279-8898. The award will be funded within seven business days of the email notification — check your bank account as the final confirmation that this is real.

Make sure to use the restaurants.sba.gov portal to check your application’s status and monitor any messages from the SBA. They will send an email if they have any issues funding the award, but if you are worried about phishing or the message going to your spam folder, the portal and the call center are resources you can access.

UPDATE: For those not yet in the approval stage: it may appear that your application has reverted to a previous step. Please don’t panic — if more information is needed to process your application, you will receive a note directly from the SBA with an email ending in @sba.gov.

In yesterday’s Journal of Accountancy, they noted that the RRF program received 266,000 applications seeking a total of $65 billion, far more than the $28.6 billion Congress allocated the program. As a result, it has less than half the money needed to fund the existing requests.

“Unless Congress passes legislation providing the RRF with fresh funding, the program looks certain to provide the vast majority of its funding to eligible businesses owned by women, veterans, and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. The American Rescue Plan Act, P.L. 117-2, which created the RRF, mandated that those businesses, which have submitted 147,000 applications totaling $29 billion, receive priority review for the first 21 days of the program,” the Journal notes.

The SBA said it would keep the RRF application portal open for now, because it still has some portion of funding set aside for eligible establishments with 2019 annual revenue of not more than $50,000.

After the first 21 days, the SBA will fund all eligible applications on a first-come, first-served basis, which is why it was so important to submit on Day One.

UPDATE: The Independent Restaurant Coalition released a fact sheet late this afternoon outlining what’s next and it deserves a read.

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