Thirty days behind on an MCA: how to pick the right move

Why thirty days calls for a decision, not another wait-and-see week

Thirty days behind is not a single event. It is a state you have been living in for weeks, and by now it has a shape. If you landed here from the first 72 hours or from one missed payment that never fully resolved, this is the natural next stop. Enough time has passed that guessing gets expensive: every week without a decision is another week the wrong assumption keeps compounding, another set of debits that either clear or do not, another chance for a manageable dip to read, on a funder's screen, as a pattern.

This page is a map, not a script. Seven paths show up again and again once an owner is a month into trouble: reconciliation, a direct hardship conversation with the funder, forbearance, a workout, consolidation, settlement, and bringing in an attorney. Each one has its own full explanation elsewhere on this site, with the exact steps, what to send, and what to say. What belongs here is the sorting: which of those seven, or which combination, actually fits what you are carrying right now, so you stop researching all seven from scratch and start on the one or two that matter.

One honest caveat before the tree. Nothing below tells you what will happen. It tells you what is commonly on the table at each level of severity, so you can walk into the right conversation instead of the wrong one.

The cost of not deciding is real, and it is not dramatic, which is exactly why it is easy to ignore. A funder who hears nothing for thirty days tends to file a business under collections rather than workout, regardless of what actually caused the gap. A revenue dip that would have been an easy reconciliation at day 10 can look, by day 30, like a pattern that needs a full restructure instead. None of that is punishment. It is just how the file reads from the other side of the desk.

Size up where you actually stand first

None of the three bands below is a legal category, and no funder will hand you a label. They are a way to sort yourself honestly before you pick a path, because the right first move at day 30 depends far more on depth than on cause.

A single position rarely jumps straight from mild to severe. What commonly moves an owner from one band to the next is a specific event, not a slow drift: a second position taken on to cover a shortfall from the first, a call from a funder that goes unanswered for a week, or a retry that fails after the first miss was quietly covered. Watching for those moments matters more than memorizing the definitions, because catching a slide from mild to moderate early is far easier than climbing back down from severe once you are there. It is also common to be mild on one position and moderate on another if you carry more than one advance. Judge each position against its own band rather than averaging them, since the funder on the other end of each one is judging that account on its own record, not your whole file at once.

• Mild. One position, a revenue dip that is real but already turning around, and a handful of missed or reduced remittances with no formal notice from the funder. Nothing has arrived from a court or a law office.
• Moderate. One position that is not recovering on its own, or two to three positions where the combined daily or weekly pull no longer matches what the business actually clears. You are still talking to funders, but the math has not been fixed.
• Severe. A written default notice, a lawsuit, a judgment, a frozen account, or a confession of judgment has entered the picture, or you are carrying enough stacked positions that a full restructuring, not a single phone call, is what the situation actually needs.

Mild: a real dip, one position, nothing formal yet

If you are in mild territory, two paths do most of the work, and they are not mutually exclusive. Most owners here end up using both at once.

• Reconciliation. Many MCA agreements include a true-up clause that lets you request the fixed remittance be resized to match actual revenue instead of the estimate the schedule was originally built on. Where an agreement contains one, it is a contractual right, not a favor you are asking for, and it commonly requires a written request with bank statements attached. Our guide on legally reducing or stopping the debits covers the legitimate ways to invoke it.
• The hardship conversation. A direct, structured call to the funder, explaining what happened and what you can actually sustain right now, often moves faster than a written request on its own and can run alongside reconciliation rather than instead of it. Start that conversation through a relief and consolidation review, which takes about two minutes and carries no credit pull to start.

Moderate: the math no longer fixes itself

Once one position will not recover on its own, or more than one is pulling at the same time, three paths cover most of what is realistically on the table.

• Forbearance. A specific, bilateral document some funders offer: a temporarily reduced remittance in exchange for something, commonly an extension of the term, added fees, or an admission about the account. It is worth reading closely before you sign, not after. Our guide on what to do when daily payments are too high covers where a reduced payment fits among your options.
• A workout. A negotiated restructuring directly with your existing funder, distinct from taking on a new facility elsewhere. It tends to fit best when you have one relationship to fix rather than several. Our guide on negotiating an MCA payoff walks through how that conversation is built.
• Consolidation. Rolling multiple positions into one new facility with a single, smaller payment, commonly available while you are still current rather than only after default. Our MCA consolidation guide lays out how it works, and what it honestly does and does not fix: lower payment, more breathing room, not necessarily less total cost.

Severe: a notice has arrived, or the stack is too deep for a call

This band starts once paper is involved, not just falling behind. A confession of judgment or a UCC lien matters only where your specific agreement actually contains one and only where courts in your state will enforce it, and neither should be assumed either way without reading the document itself. What does not change with severity: stopping payments or blocking the ACH to force a resolution is never the move, and it is often exactly what turns a hard situation into a declared default. Our guide on what actually happens in an MCA default walks through the mechanics if a notice has already arrived.

• Settlement. A negotiated release of the debt for less than the full balance, realistically on the table once genuine default has occurred and leverage exists on both sides. It usually costs more in terms of the funding relationship going forward than a workout or consolidation would, and it is a later-stage path, not a first move. Our guide on whether you can settle a merchant cash advance covers when it fits.
• An attorney. Once litigation, a judgment, a frozen account, or a filed confession of judgment is part of the picture, a broker is no longer the right primary help. A qualified attorney who has read your actual agreement is. Our guide on attorneys versus brokers explains what each one actually does.

The paths combine more often than they compete

Few thirty-day situations resolve with exactly one of the seven paths above. A reconciliation request and a hardship conversation commonly run at the same time, since one is written and one is verbal and a funder can act on both without either one blocking the other. A workout that starts as a conversation with one funder can turn into a full consolidation once the numbers are on paper and it becomes clear that more than one position needs to move, not just one. Even settlement and an attorney often arrive together rather than in sequence, since a lawyer is frequently the one doing the negotiating once settlement is genuinely on the table.

What does not mix well is chasing three or four of these paths at once without a single, current picture of your positions. Pick a lane based on the severity band above, work it for a defined stretch, commonly a week or two, and reassess with new information rather than running every option in parallel and leaving every funder unsure what you actually want from them.

A rough sequence helps more than a rigid rule. Mild situations commonly start with the written reconciliation request and the hardship call together, in the same week. Moderate situations commonly add a workout or forbearance conversation once it is clear a single adjustment will not be enough, and often end up at consolidation once more than one position needs to move at the same time. Severe situations usually start with an attorney and let settlement, if it happens, follow that advice rather than lead it. None of that is a fixed order, only a pattern worth knowing before you decide your own.

What to have ready before you start any of these calls

Whichever path you pick, the same handful of documents make every conversation faster and every request harder for a funder to ignore or delay.

None of this takes more than an afternoon to assemble, and it does double duty. The same one-page picture that speeds up a reconciliation request or a hardship call is exactly what a workout, a consolidation application, or an attorney will ask for next, so building it once at day 30 saves you from rebuilding it from memory at day 60.

• Your signed agreement for every position, with the reconciliation clause, the default section, and the personal guarantee flagged for a quick re-read.
• Three to six months of bank statements and processing statements, showing plainly what changed and roughly when it changed.
• A one-page list of every position you carry: remaining balance, daily or weekly pull, and a current payoff figure requested from each funder.
• A short written summary, three or four sentences, of what happened, what deposits look like now, and what you realistically expect over the next 90 days.
• A dated log of every notice, call, and email already exchanged with each funder, even the ones that felt informal at the time.

When the tier does not matter: the line that always means call a lawyer

Everything above assumes you are choosing between paths, and that choice is still yours to make. That stops being true the moment a lawsuit has been filed, a judgment has been entered against you, your account has been frozen, or a funder has begun contacting your customers or your card processor directly to redirect payments. At that point, general information stops being enough, whichever severity band you started the day in.

This page, like every guide on this site, is general information, not legal advice. It describes what is common across many MCA agreements, not what your specific contract says. A qualified attorney who has actually read your agreement is the right call once litigation or a judgment is on the table, and that does not change based on which of the seven paths above you were leaning toward before the letter arrived.

Where this leaves you at day 30

Thirty days behind feels like it should have one obvious answer. It usually has two or three reasonable ones, and the job today is narrowing seven paths down to the one or two that actually fit your numbers, not researching all of them at once before you make a single call.

If you are not sure which band you are in, or you want a second set of eyes before you contact a funder, start with a relief and consolidation review. It runs off your positions and a few bank statements, there is no credit pull to start, and nothing about it is an offer of credit: estimates only, actual terms set by underwriting. Call or text 866-625-4413, Monday to Friday, 8a to 7p ET. Whichever path fits, the goal at day 30 is the same one it was on day one: stay in good standing while you fix the numbers, rather than trying to fix the numbers by falling further out of it.