Change has been the one constant during COVID-19 pandemic
Reflecting on the past several months, a thought keeps popping into my head: “Change.”
While change has always been a factor in our daily work and personal lives, it has become exponentially more impactful these past several months with onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Personally, I have had to adjust to working from home and converting client engagements from a combination of on-site and off-site approaches to a completely off-site approach. In addition, my daughter and stepson, who were both seniors in high school this year, missed out on many of the spring activities and events that traditionally make lasting memories of the last year in high school.
Your experiences with change due to the pandemic may involve even more significant challenges or even personal hardships, but one of the underlying themes throughout these past several months is that all of us have had to pivot to various degrees on how we approach and manage day-to-day workloads and employee and customer health and safety. In addition, we have to keep up on all of the federal and state pandemic guidance and the new economic stimulus programs enacted by Congress to help address the significant economic impact to small businesses.
As we all are aware, one of the more important pieces of legislation launched by the federal government to provide relief to small businesses has been the SBA Payment Protection Program (PPP).
Since its rollout in record time in early April, we have seen PPP’s continuous evolutional changes as loan terms, updated rules, revised forms and clarifying questions and answers have been published by the SBA and the Treasury Department.
Many of these changes were called for by lending institutions participating in the program, as well as the AICPA and a handful of national small business advocacy organizations representing several million small businesses.
One thing is certain, everyone engaged in the PPP loan process, ranging from commercial lenders and their support teams to outside consultants and advisors, has been focused on helping their small and medium-sized business customers answer questions and sort through the frequent updates and clarifications associated with the PPP loan forgiveness requirements. As frustrating as it may seem, it appears the more significant workload still lies ahead as lending institutions and loan recipients start to work through the PPP loan forgiveness application process.
If your institution still feels uncertain about its PPP loan forgiveness implementation process and begins feeling pressure to get the paperwork done and reviewed on a timely basis, Wipfli can help.
We have resources dedicated to assisting our small business clients who obtained PPP loans with working through the PPP forgiveness process, as well as financial institutions who may need a helping hand with the loan forgiveness application workload.
Here’s where you can get more information:
Read our article on loan forgiveness documentation and accounting
