Business Debt Schedule: Definition and Templates
If your business carries debt, it’s important to be able to quickly monitor your obligations. A business debt schedule allows businesses to track and visualize their debts in order to make informed decisions about business growth, cash flow analysis and payment strategies.
What is a business debt schedule?
A business debt schedule (also called a debt service schedule or schedule of liabilities) is a table that lists your monthly debt payments in order of maturity. It helps you track cash flow and make informed, strategic decisions about paying off debt and potentially taking on new small business loans.
A debt schedule provides an overview of your long-term business debts, such as:
- Loans
- Mortgages
- Lines of credit
- Credit cards
- Leases
- Bonds
- Debentures
Short-term business expenses — such as accounts payable, payroll and real estate taxes — are usually excluded from a debt schedule. These obligations are instead accounted for on your business’s balance sheet. Keeping long-term debt separate from these short-term liabilities allows financial managers to better understand the company’s longer-term debt burden.
How to make a business debt schedule
To make a business debt schedule, start by making a list of each type of debt, including loans, leases, credit cards and any other long-term payments your business is required to make on a regular basis. Financial documents like cash flow statements and business loan agreements can help you gather all the information you need.
As you review your documents, list all the relevant details of each debt, including:
- Creditor or lender name
- Origination date of the debt
- Original debt amount
- Current balance
- Interest rate
- Monthly payment
- Security or collateral pledged
- Maturity date
Including every aspect allows for more informed decision making about how to strategically manage your debt. You may also want to include notes, such as the reason for each loan or any other information that is pertinent to the lender or the repayment process. For example, do your lenders charge prepayment penalties, or would you be eligible for a discount if you pay off your loan ahead of schedule?
If you need to create debt schedules for months past, you’ll want to pull your records – like past payments made and/or your amortization schedules – to simplify the process. Online calculators may not always be able to account for how your loans amortize and what fees are rolled in.
5 free business debt schedule templates
Making your own business debt schedule can be done using Excel or Google Sheets. The following templates are good resources to get you started:
- Small Business Administration. The SBA has a free downloadable PDF that can be used to build a business debt schedule.
- CommunityWorks Carolina. If you prefer to work in a spreadsheet, this nonprofit organization offers a free Excel-based template.
- Pursuit Lending. This New York-based SBA lender provides a fillable PDF template.
- Bank of America. BoA offers a straightforward, fillable debt schedule template.
- Navy Federal Credit Union. This credit union also has a fillable debt schedule form.
Business debt schedule example
Let’s take a look at a debt schedule for a fictional company that has several kinds of debt: an SBA loan, an auto loan, invoice factoring and equipment financing.
For each debt, the schedule lists the type of debt, the creditor, the debt’s original amount and date, how much the company still owes, the interest rate and monthly payment, what collateral secures the debt and when the debt will be fully paid (maturity). If your company has debt with multiple types of rates — like APRs, factor rates and simple interest — you’d want to include those details on your schedule.
November 2025 debt schedule
| Debt type | Creditor | Origination date | Original amount | Current balance | Interest rate | Monthly payment | Security | Maturity date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SBA loan | CDC | 10/3/23 | $200,000 | $165,399 | 4.50% | $2,073 | Retail store | 10/3/33 |
| Equipment financing | National bank | 5/1/23 | $50,000 | $26,944 | 6.25% | $972 | Equipment | 5/1/28 |
| Auto loan | Local credit union | 1/1/22 | $20,000 | $11,709 | 5.50% | $258 | Truck | 1/1/30 |
| Term loan | Online lender | 8/1/21 | $35,000 | $6,778 | 7.50% | $701 | Invoices | 8/1/26 |
| TOTALS | N/A | N/A | $305,000 | $210,830 | N/A | $4,004 | N/A | N/A |
This chart provides an at-a-glance look at all the debt this company carries, how much they’re paying to service it each month and when it will all be paid off. Maintaining an overview of this information is essential for business money management.
Uses for a business debt schedule
Keeping a debt schedule is useful to get a bird’s-eye view of all your debts and construct a business cash flow analysis. In addition to monitoring financial obligations, using a business debt schedule offers multiple benefits to your business:
- Stay current with debt payments: A debt schedule lets you see all the amounts that you owe each month, which can help you stay on top of your business’s finances. This is one of the tool’s most important functions, since missed payments can negatively affect your reputation and business credit score.
- Keep your books accurate: Having all the information about your debts easily accessible can ensure that your debt schedule matches your other bookkeeping methods. For example, interest expenses listed in the debt schedule will inform your income statement, and principal repayments listed there also appear on your cash flow statement.
- Negotiate better rates: When you’ve established a record of prompt payment on an outstanding loan, you may be able to negotiate a lower interest rate through a refinance. The debt schedule lays out which loans have the highest rates and monthly payments, information that can help you identify refinancing opportunities.
- Strategize payments: A debt schedule can help you see the strategic benefit of paying certain debt off early. You can assess which of your debts to pay off first if you have the means to fast-track any of your repayments. For example, it might make sense to pay off high-interest loans first to save on interest costs over time.
- Make borrowing decisions: Knowing whether you can afford to borrow more depends on knowing your total debt and monthly payments. If a potential new loan doesn’t fit into this financial picture, you’ll know right away if you should hold off until your financial picture improves.
- Provide accurate information: The data on your debt schedule can be used in various ways to inform potential new lenders, creditors and even prospective buyers about your business’s financial details. Having this data in one place helps you pull the appropriate reports easily.
- Monitor your business’s financial health: The debt schedule is a key part of the larger picture regarding how your company is faring financially. If the totals for balances and monthly payments are too large, you’ll be able to see that immediately and figure out a plan to bring those numbers down.
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