Nexus measures business starts based upon the total number of clients with a Reportable Business Start Impact Date within the reporting period. The "Reportable Business Start Impact" field is a new field introduced on October 1, 2023 on the SBA 641 along with the "Verified to be in business" field:

The first field asks whether the counselor can verify that the client is in business. Since many clients "think" they are in business simply by virtue of having a business idea or a business license, it is important for the counselor to verify that they meet the requirements for an in-business client per the SBA definition:

• Counselor must verify that the business completed required registration(s), if applicable, with the local, state, and/or Federal government (e.g., DBA registration, get a business license, agency issued tax identifications, etc.) AND at least one of the following:
  • Generated Revenue Has documented a transaction from the sale of a product or professional or personal service for the purpose of gain or profit.
  • Accessing Capital Has acquired debt or Equity Infusion to pursue business operations, for example, to purchase inventory, equipment, building, business, etc.
  • Debt includes SBA Loans and Non-SBA loans. Non-SBA loans includes all forms of capital debt, for example, consumer debt products used specifically for the business, lines of credit, and other revolving debt facilities/instruments.
  • Equity Infusion includes all forms of investments from all sources, for example, angel investors, crowd funding, family contributions, owners? capital contributions, grants and other capital contributions not associated with equity.
  • Acquired Resources Has hired and/or compensated an employee(s) including the business owner/sole proprietor or contracted with an independent contractor(s) to perform essential business functions.
  • Incurred Expenses Has incurred business expenses in the operation of a business.

Because only the counselor can verify whether the client is in business, or not, this field is not asked on eCenter Direct as part of the client intake process. Both the "Verified to be in business" and the "Reportable Business Start Impact" fields are only available in Neoserra and must be completed by the counselor.

Once the counselor verifies that the client is in business based upon the criteria above, then the counselor will need to check the: "Verified to be in business?" checkbox:

As soon as the client is verified to be in business by the business counselor then the "Reportable Business Start Impact" field becomes available for editing:

If the counselor substantively assisted that business in starting their operations, then the counselor can claim the business start impact even if the date of such impact is long after the client's business start date. When the Reportable Impact date has been entered, it will be counted as a new business start in Nexus. The New Business Start will be counted within the Fiscal Year and Quarter of the session in which the Reportable Impact was reported. Once the Reportable Impact has been claimed for a client, and once that information has been exported to Nexus, then the date becomes locked and no further subsequent business start impact may be claimed for that client.

Neoserra will offer a variety of prompts, any time you create a counseling, milestone or capital funding session with a client whose "Company Status" on the client record is set either to Start-up or In-business and whose business either has not yet been verified and/or where no impact has been recorded:

• If a client has a date established in their client record that is less than one year ago, and the "Verified to be in business" field is not checked, then Neoserra will offer the following prompt, after creating a session:

  

• If a client has a date established in their client record that is less than one year ago, and the "Verified to be in business" field is checked, then Neoserra will offer the following prompt, after creating a session:

  

In the case of the above two prompts, if you select "Yes" to record reportable impact for the client, then today's date will be put in the Business Start Impact Date field, a Business Start Impact milestone will be automatically created, and this question will never pop-up again. If you select "No" then the same question will be asked the next time you meet with a client, unless you also click the: "Don't ask me again this question for this client." checkbox. If you don't want Neoserra to ask you this question again, then it will be your responsibility to remember to set the Reportable Business Start Impact if/when you have substantively provided assistance to the client. The setting only applies to your user login, other users in your network will still see the prompt unless they also check the "Don't ask me..." box.

• If a client has a date established in their client record that is more than one year ago, and the "Verified to be in business" field is not checked, then Neoserra will offer the following prompt, after creating a session:

  

The bottom line, Neoserra will ONLY prompt to record Business Start Impact if the business formation was less than 1 year ago from the counseling session. Neoserra will continue to ask the counselor to verify that the client is in business regardless of when they started their business. Answering "Yes" to this question will check the "Verified to be in business" checkbox on the client record but no milestones will be created.

You can also manually edit the client record and update the Business Start Impact date. No date prior to 10/1/23 is allowed to be entered, nor can you enter a date into the future. Keep in mind that once the date is entered and exported to Nexus, it will be locked and you will not be able to edit it again. The date entered on the client record will also be the date of the Business Start Impact milestone that will be automatically created when you update this field:

If the prompts are not desirable, then they can be suppressed on the United States SBA/DoD panel under the Administration|Configuration menu.

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