Welcome everyone.

♫♪♪

My name is Chris Nichols from CenterState Bank. I'm with 

Adriana Baird from SmartBiz and together

we're going to walk through how to actually enter your information

for PPP forgiveness using the SmartBiz application.

So, Adriana, start us off, tell us where to go first.

Adriana Baird: Great. Thanks, Chris.

So here you're seeing the landing page for the CenterState

SmartBiz PPP loan forgiveness application. If you applied

for your PPP loan through SmartBiz

as you are originating with CenterState Bank, you'll

be given a login link here and you can use the same credentials

that you used during your PPP loan application process to

log in to your application and start your loan forgiveness

application here.

Chris Nichols: Sorry, let me just jump in real quick. Just like the origination,

all customers, all borrowers, should have utilized Chrome for

the best experience and should most likely have all their

documentation ready.

Now, you can start and stop

at any point in time and the application saves where

you left off, but it's probably best to get everything together

having watched some of our videos online, having gone through

our website to get the full education, know what you're going

to need to upload, and then be ready to go with this, you'll

get an email with either of these two links.

So either you're an existing customer of SmartBiz that has

been through the application process during the PPP origination

period or this is going to be brand new to which Adriana

will show you next.

Adriana Baird: Great. Yeah, so if you did not apply for your loan through SmartBiz,

you'll be directed to the registration page here.

Again, if you did not apply for your PPP loan through the SmartBiz

portal for origination,

you'll need to create a new account here.

And if you have multiple affiliates and applied for separate

PPP loans for each affiliate, you do need to complete a separate

loan forgiveness application for each PPP loan that you received.

Same goes for existing customers, you'll need to apply for a

separate PPP loan forgiveness application for each account

that you have.

So I've already filled out some of the information here and

I will start with creating a new account.

So to start the application, we will bring you to this kind of welcome

page where you can see an overview of the application process

and additional information about the SBA form 3508 and the

form 3508EZ, which are the SBA's PPP loan forgiveness

applications. We'll link to and refer to these forms throughout

the application, so you can refer to them for more information

as well.

Chris Nichols: So borrowers don't actually need their forms because

they're going to fill it out online.

Is that right?

Adriana Baird: Right. So all of the information that you'll be inputting

in this application here will be used to fill out that form for you

and then send it back to you for e-sign at the end of this

process. We're linking to these forms just so you can have

an idea of what that final form is going to look like, but

you only need to input information in this process.

Chris Nichols: And for those that already completed those forms,

no worries.

One, they gave you a pretty good test run so you're better prepared. 

And two, at the very end,

we're going to show you how you can upload that form, it can

only help you out and help speed the process, if you haven't

and if you don't, it's not that big a deal.

It's not required.

Adriana Baird: Great. So I'll start the process here.

So to start out, we will be asking you information about your

business, both your business and the PPP loan that you received.

So here we'll have basic information.

If you did apply for your PPP loan through SmartBiz

during the origination process, we'll be able to pre-fill

some of this information for you based on your PPP loan.

All right, again, here we're asking for your business address.

All of the information here does need to match up with your

PPP borrower application form.

That's your SBA form 2483.

So you want to make sure that you're entering, for example,

your address here and exactly the way it appears on your

PPP loan application form.

Here we have the EIN. If you are an independent contractor

or sole proprietor or eligible self-employed individual and

you do not have an EIN,

you'll see an option here to input an SSN as your tax ID. 

So here we are requiring you to upload your SBA form 2483. 

Again, that's your PPP borrower application form.

So this will help the reviewers of your application make sure

that your information here matches up with your form 2483. 

Chris Nichols: And just as a side note, it should be the person

that completes this application should be the same person

that actually signed the original PPP origination application.

But if not, we've made allowances for that and you'll

certify at the end that you're authorized to enter the forgiveness

form, so I just want to state that upfront, we'll state that again

in the back end.

So just keep that in mind.

Adriana Baird: Great.

Great. So here we're asking you information about your loan and

loan disbursement.

So you'll see throughout the application that we have these

question marks with pop-up windows and these will provide

you more information throughout the process.

And so if you are unsure about what a term means or you want

more information about, you know, a certain question, you

can hover your mouse over these question marks and you'll

see more information here.

So your loan disbursement date is the date on which your

loan amount was transferred to you from your bank.

So you'll be entering your date here.

We also have a date picker so you can scroll through the

calendar and pick the date there. And here you'll be entering

your loan amount and your SBA PPP loan number. Again, another

definition here to help you locate this information on your

application and in your loan information.

So here we're asking if you're a business together with affiliates,

if applicable, received PPP loans in excess of $2 million.

So answer "no" here and continue.

So here we'll ask you some questions to help you select a

covered period. So you're covered period is the period of

time in which your costs that are eligible for forgiveness

must be paid or incurred. If you received your PPP loan before

June 5th, 2020,

you can choose between an 8-week or 24-week covered period.

So yes, I did receive this long before June 5th and I'll

choose an 8-week covered period here.

So you'll see that the covered period dates were automatically

calculated based on my PPP loan disbursement date.

My loan was dispersed on April 1st and May 27th is 8 weeks after that date. 

Chris Nichols: And so they put in 24-week

period, it will automatically fill in 24 weeks

and I think if you watch some of our other videos that answered

a lot of questions that hey, can you file before the end

of 24 weeks and the answer is yes. So just know that there

will be a slight discrepancy that if you, hey, if you meet

your full forgiveness amount or you've maximized it in, say,

week 14 as an example, then there will be a 24-week period,

but you'll still present information for those 14 weeks or

whatever you're covered period actually is if you're willing

to support for maximum forgiveness.

Adriana Baird: Right. Yeah, so you can see here that I changed it,

I changed in mind, I want to use 24-week period, you can 

see the dates changed here.

Here, I am selecting an alternative payroll covered period,

this is optional as indicated.

So if you use a biweekly or a more frequent payroll schedule,

you may choose to use an alternative payroll covered

period. And it's the same length as your covered period, but

the start date is the first day of your first pay period

after receiving your PPP loan funds. So if you kind

of gone over that information and decided that that's in your best

interest, you would select this box.

Again, here's an example of an explanation that we've provided.

This information is taken directly from the SBA instructions.

So we're making sure that all of this information is available

for you here. And here, I'll choose let's say my covered

period starts on April 1st, but my first pay period started

on April 8th, so I'll select that and you can see I now have

a 24-week alternative payroll covered period.

Here we're asking about your payroll frequency.

Then I'll continue to the next page.

Great.

So we've now provided information about your business and

about your loan and we'll move on to the expenses section.

So here you'll be reporting the expenses that you used your

PPP loan to pay and that you want to be forgiven.

These costs must be paid or incurred during your covered

period or alternative payroll covered period. So we'll start

here with cash compensation and payroll costs.

We do provide the definition of cash compensation here per

the SBA's instructions and we also advise you exactly what

not to include in your cash compensation costs because we'll

be getting those costs later on in the process.

So if you do have payroll costs of cash compensation to report,

I'll click "yes" here. If I do not have costs to report in this

section, specifically for

cash compensation, I'll click "no" and then I will not be required

to answer the relevant question.

If I do answer "yes," then all of the questions in this page

are required, as you'll need to provide the required supporting

documentations for your expenses.

So here I'll enter the amount and I will provide my documentation.

I'm just uploading a sample document here for each of these.

You may have a document that applies to want more than one

requirement and you can upload that for multiple requirements

here. You can also upload multiple documents per requirement

here. So if you have two different payroll statements in

PDF form or Word docs or Excels that you need to upload,

you can upload both of them in this document.

Chris Nichols: It is important to note that we take most all file formats.

So anything traditional Word doc, PowerPoint doc, Excel, PDF

is probably the best to use. We don't take zip and some more

esoteric file formats.

Adriana Baird: Great.

Thanks Chris.

Yeah. So here we're asking you for an additional explanation

to how you calculated the expenses listed above. The intent

here is so that your reviewer can receive your information

and make the review process smoother and get all the

information from you that's relevant to your application.

So here I'll provide just an example.

"Bill's explanation and documentation." The more information

you can provide here, the better, to make the calculations

easier for your reviewer to cross-check.

Chris Nichols: And so, well, this is an optional field.

I can't stress the importance of this in terms of speed of

your application getting it through the process and to the

SBA as fast as possible.

Our reviewers are going to have a hard time trying to figure

out exactly what I meant. So this is your opportunity to tell

us what to look for, what numbers, so if you have, you know, 

30 employees and you're down to 10, it would be important to

know where to find that in the application.

Maybe point out the page numbers, maybe highlight something

on Page 14, whatever it is.

The easier you can make it for us to go back and figure out

what you meant

in terms of the numbers you're using and where you have 

supported those numbers, the better

it is for everyone.

So we thank you in advance for your diligence on

these boxes.

Adriana Baird: Right, yeah.

And just one quick point here is that this actually

is a required field for this page.

So we do request that you provide that additional information

for each cost expense.

Chris Nichols: Good point.

Adriana Baird: Great, so moving through 

non-cash compensation. Again, we will provide

the definition of non-cash compensation here per the SBA

instructions. Non-cash compensation includes employee 

health insurance, employee retirement plans and any employer 

state and local taxes that are assessed on employee 

compensation. 
So I'll select "yes" here.

For these expenses,

I will enter, let's see, some fields here.

If you do not have any expenses for one of these fields,

one or two of these fields, then we're asking you to enter

a zero here for the corresponding input, understanding that

you may have costs to report for employee health insurance,

but you may not have cost report for employee retirement

plans. So if that's the case, then you would just enter a

zero in this field here. And again, we're providing more

information in these question marks so that you'll know exactly

what constitutes each of these costs.

And again, we have here required documentation.

I reported health insurance statements,

so I will upload documentation here.

But since I did not have any cost for employee retirement

plans, I will not have any documentation for this cost here.

Again, "Bill's explanation," similar explanation field. Again,

we'll have this for each costs, each expense section, so that

you can explain how your documents match up with your 

costs that are reported. 

Great.

So here we're getting into the payroll costs for owners section.

Payroll costs for owners is counted separately in the SBA

3508 and 3508EZ.

So if you use your PPP loan to pay any owner-employees 

self-employed individuals or general partners, then you 

would select "yes" here.

Here, the amount that you are calculating has a cap of an 

annualized compensation of $100,000 a year.

So if you have any individuals in this category with an annualized

compensation of over $100,000, then you'll need

to cap that at either the 8-week or two and a half

month equivalent, depending on your covered period. We provide

more information here in this explain this modal to, again,

provide more information from the SBA instructions and help

you with that information. Again, supporting document upload

here. I'll move to the next section. Great.

So now we're moving out of payroll cost expenses, and we'll

move through business rent or lease payments, mortgage interest

payments and utilities.

So as with the other sections, if you do not have any business,

any costs to report for this section for business rent or

lease payments, I would select "no" and I'd move on to the

next section. For this demonstration,

I'll select "yes."

And I'll upload the required documents here.

For this section and the following two expenses,

you will also need to certify that the rent or lease services

began before February 15th, 2020. Again, another requirement in

SBA in their form 3508, 3508EZ and an explanation.

Similar process here, but for mortgage interest payments.

Again, question mark here providing more information about

what the covered mortgage obligations include and then 

expense reporting. 

Certification here, and an explanation. 

So as an example in this application, I can show you what

 will happen if you don't have any costs to report for a section. So say

for this business, I do not have any utility expenses to

report for my PPP loan.

Then I would click "no" here, click "continue" and I've skipped

that section and moved on to the next. If I do decide, I can choose

to go back and change that to a "yes,"

I can use the back button up here or the back button down

here to move backwards.

We'll keep that as a no here.

So here we have the option, and this page is optional, to upload

any additional documentation that you think will help your

reviewer or your lender make a decision on your loan forgiveness

application. So if you've used a spreadsheet that's been

provided to you to help you with your calculations, or as

Chris mentioned earlier, if you've already filled out your

form 3508.

That's great.

You can upload that here.

Any other additional supporting documentation that you think

will be helpful for somebody reviewing your application,

you can include here. 

Chris Nichols: You all should get in the mail, or

in the email, an Excel spreadsheet to help you complete this

application. For those of you with say multiple properties

with several different mortgages and leases, it helps you

collate that information.

And so this is the place where you'd upload that spreadsheet

to help the reviewer kind of step through everything.

Adriana Baird: Great.

I'm going to continue here without uploading these.

And I'll move into the adjustment section.

So in this section, we'll ask you questions about your business's

employee workforce and your salaries during a few different

time periods,

both you're covered period and other time periods that

are asked for by the SBA.

We've also, again, linked to the form 3508 and 3508EZ here,

so if you have any questions and you want to refer to those

documents, you have that accessibility here. We'll also be asking

you some questions about your eligibility to use the form

3508EZ.

Moving forward, here are some more simple questions.

How many employees did your business have at the 

time of application? For this business,

I'll enter 17 employees for both.

We have employees at time of application and the employees

that your business has currently. So here are the questions

as I referred to earlier for your eligibility for the SBA

form 3508EZ.

The 3508EZ is a streamlined version of the PPP loan forgiveness

application. It requires some fewer calculations and reductions

to your loan forgiveness and applies to borrowers who fulfill

certain eligibility requirements.

So we'll be asking you questions here for employees with

an annualized salary of $100,000 or less if you

reduce their salary by more than 25% during this period. For

the purposes of this business,

I'll be doing the form 3508.

Did you reduce the number of employees or the average paid

hours of your employees between January 1st?

And this is the end of your covered pay period. I'll say "no"

here and then was your business unable to operate during

the covered period at the same level of business activity

as before February 15th due to restrictions, restrictions

related to work or customer safety for COVID.

So if you were unable to operate you would select

"yes."

If not, I would select "no", so I will select

"no" here. Great.

So here we have questions that correspond directly to the

PPP loan forgiveness application form 3508 Schedule A. So,

we'll be walking through the cash compensation for employees

with an annualized salary of $100k or less during

the covered period or alternative payroll covered period.

We will be requiring documentation for these questions later

on in this adjustment section as well.

So here we have four employees with an annualized salary

of $100k or less. For whom you reduced the salary by

more than 25%, how much was that salary reduced? And if you

did not make any salary reductions greater than 25%

during this period, please enter a zero in this box.

We've also provided more information here.

Here's an example that was provided by the SBA in their interim

final goal to help you with these calculations.

Great.

So these questions, very similar.

They apply to employees whose annualized salary is greater

than $100,000 and these questions also correspond

to Schedule A, Lines 4 and 5 of your form 3508.

Moving forward, we also asked about your average full-time

equivalency here or FTE.

We've added more information here on how to calculate your

full-time equivalency, again, based on the SBA instructions

in the form 3508.

Great.

So here we'll ask you some questions about your full-time

equivalency in order to determine if you qualify for the

full-time equivalency reduction Safe Harbor or if your forgiveness

amount will be reduced based on a reduction in your employee

workforce. So if you are a seasonal employer, again we include

a definition here, if you operate for just a few months at

a time out of the year, you can select

"yes," and this will give you an optional time period here

for you to compare your full-time equivalency to. For this

business, I will select "no" and now I'll need to select a reference

period. So these time periods are provided by the SBA and

they'll be used to compare your amount of full-time equivalency

employees during this time period to your current amount

of full-time equivalency employees.

So I've selected a period and I've been asked to enter the

company's average full-time equivalency for employees during

this time period. I'll enter the same amount as I did not reduce any

of my employees for this business. If I had, then I would

enter the amount that was relevant to this time period here.

I can also see that based on my previous questions in this

section, you can see the calculated amount of total full-time

equivalency from my covered period or alternative payroll

covered period from the last section.

Great.

So one more question here and do I reduce my businesses full-time

equivalency employee levels  between February 15th and April 26th.

These dates are, again, instructed by the SBA to determine

whether or not I'm eligible for the FTE reduction Safe Harbor.

If I were to answer "yes" here, I am also asked if I have restored

my businesses full-time equivalency employ levels by December 31st of 2020.

So as of the passing of the PPP Flexibility Act,

businesses have until the end of this year to restore

FTE employee levels to what they were prior to February 15th.

So if you had to lay anybody off or reduce your employee

workforce within the last few months, you'll have until the

end of the year to restore those and avoid any reductions

to your forgiveness amount.

So if that's the case, I would click

"yes," my FTE reduction quotient would stay at

one, which means my forgiveness amount would not be reduced.

If I were to click "no," the FTE reduction quotient would

be calculated by dividing my businesses total average FTE

for 2019 by the average FTE during my chosen reference period.

For this business,

I am going to select "no" here so that the FTE reduction quotient

is one. As I mentioned earlier, we do require additional documentation

for this section.

So the documentation required here is to show your average

number of full-time equivalency employees during this time

period. And again, your payroll tax filings that are relevant

to the periods as well.

Here, we have a list of supporting documents for your full-time

equivalency calculations.

These are optional as you can see here.

The Borrower is required to maintain but not submit this

documentation. It's recommended that you submit the documents

so that your lender will have more information during the

review process and if additional information is requested

in the future, they'll have this ready at hand.

So here we have the Schedule A worksheet, which is a part

of the 3508.

We have specific information for employees with

an annualized salary of $100,000 or less, same for employees

with annualized salary of $100,000 or more and any

documentation related to the FTE reduction exceptions or

the FTE reduction Safe Harbor.

So last step in the adjustment section, if you received an

EIDL prior to applying for your PPP loan, we'll ask you to

complete information here.

So if this is the case, I would enter my EIDL application

number. If I received on my EIDL,

I will want to enter that here. And another requirement here,

I need to provide documentation of my EIDL. As with before,

if I did not receive an EIDL,

I would have selected

"no" for this question

I could skip over this requirement.

So continuing on, we have an optional, again, PPP borrower

demographic information form. This is asking you some information

about your principal.

We have the definition of the principal here as provided

by the SBA.

And so again, this form is optional if you would like to

submit that with your application.

Great.

So we've made it through now basic information about your

business and loan expenses, which are all of your eligible

expenses for PPP forgiveness and then information about your

employee workforce and salary to accommodate for any adjustments.

So our next step is to preview your application.

We have your application organized here in a very similar

format as the form 3508.

You can see what each of these inputs correspond to, so if

you take a look at the form 3508, you'll see how each of

these inputs matches up with the actual form. This is

your chance to review the inputs and make any edits that

you need to make.

Here, so you see your loan information that you requested

in the basic information section.

You can see all of your inputs here.

So some of these fields are calculated fields.

So the inputs that you provided go into, for example, your

potential forgiveness amounts.

So here you'll see in each of these question marks how these

inputs were calculated to understand how your estimated forgiveness

amount came out here.

So here you have three potential forgiveness amounts based

on your PPP loan amount, the requirement to spend

at least 60% of your loan on payroll costs, and a modified total

based on your full-time equivalency reduction quotients.

So here, Line 11 is the least of Lines 8, 9, and 10, and so you'll

see here,

this is what your estimated forgiveness amount is, subject,

again, to your lenders decision and the SBA's final decision.

Here we have the information

I entered in the adjustment section.

So you'll see the cash compensation for salaries of less

than $100k, my average full-time equivalency, and so

on. If I need to edit something here, say I want to change,

I realized I said 16, but I should have said 17, I can edit

that here.

Save it there.

You'll see the calculated fields have updated accordingly

and then I'll need to upload an additional document.

So I just changed my full-time equivalency.

So I'll upload another document here for my required full-time

equivalency documentation.

I can select which document bucket.

I need to upload the document to.

And then I will click and upload here.

There we go, and then I'll save that.

Great.

So I've reviewed my application.

I can confirm that all this information is complete.

So the last step is for me to complete the certifications that

part that are both in the 3508,

and then one last certification is, Chris mentioned at the

beginning of this video, that you are authorized to complete

this application.

So each of these certifications, I won't read through all

of them in detail now, but you'll need to read through these

and check each box in order to complete the application.

So these certifications correspond to Page 2 of your form

3508 or 3508EZ. And then here's this last certification

that Chris had mentioned earlier that you certify that the

information entered

this far is accurate and that you're authorized on behalf

of the Borrower to submit your application.

So I'll submit my forgiveness application.

Great.

So this last page here, you'll be given another overview

of the steps that you've completed and where your application

is at in the process.

So you'll also be receiving an email with this information

and a confirmation that your application has been submitted

successfully. So from here, it's now in the Lenders hands

and your application will be reviewed and the decision will

be made. Once a decision's made, you'll be receiving an email

notifying you to log back in to complete the application

for an electronic signature

and then your lender will be able to submit it to

the SBA.

And that's it.

Chris Nichols: Once you submit it to the Bank,

once we get a complete application,

we have 60 days to respond.

We're going to try to do that in much less.

We're going to try to do it in 30 days or less. Some of you

at the start of the process will be much faster, some of you

in the heat of the process,

once we get a lot of customers going, we'll probably take all

30-35 days, but we'll try to get to it as fast as possible.

We will go back and forth if you have any questions with

you, so just because you submit it, it won't be your final

application, so you'll have a chance to correct errors before

we submit it.

We are in your camp that the Bank wants to see you as

a borrower get maximum forgiveness allowable by SBA guidance

and law. Once we have your maximum forgiveness,

we will submit that to the SBA. The SBA, similar to the Bank,

has 90 days to respond and they've pledged that they're going

to try to do it much faster as well. Lately

it's been minutes in our test runs, but that means little

once they get the illusion of of applications at least to

start, we expect it to take probably 30 to 45 days for a response.

You'll get a notice as soon as we get a notice.

And so then, as Adriana said, it will walk you through how

to finish off the application there and then we'll be following

up as a bank to finalize your forgiveness package.

Adriana, anything else?

Adriana Baird: Great. One additional note that is if someone is reviewing your application

and they do request additional information, specifically documentation

from you,

you'll be receiving an email to log back into your application

and complete those requests.

So keep an eye out for those once you've submitted your application.

Chris Nichols: Excellent. And if they need more information from

the Bank, where they find our information?

Adriana Baird: You can log back in, log out, log back in of your application

as you're submitting or as you're finishing your submission,

throughout the application here,

you'll see CenterState's customer service information.

Here, they have an email address for PPP support and then again,

a link to their PPP loan forgiveness resource center.

There also will be a phone number here shortly.

Chris Nichols: Yeah, so do check out some of our videos that 

are available on particular topics.

Other than that,

I think this is an easy, straightforward application.

Adriana, I thank you for your time.

Thank you for walking all of us through the application

process. To the borrowers out there,

best of luck.

We are standing by to support you, and if you have any questions,

please reach out and contact us.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Chris.

♫♪♪