Clearing debt is one of the few moves that permanently improves your monthly cash position. Every payment you retire is money that stays in the business.

Frank can tell you what you owe, what it costs you each month, which order to attack it in, and whether your cash flow can handle going faster.

This article covers the prompts to use, how to pull the numbers into a spreadsheet, and how to set up a weekly briefing so progress tracks itself.

Frank reads your synced bank records, so recurring loan drafts appear automatically. Balances on lines of credit, credit cards, and factoring facilities often do not, because the balance lives with the lender rather than in your transaction feed. Get those in first: How to Find Your "Invisible" Debt.

Then ask Frank for the full picture:

Show me every debt I'm carrying, the balance on each, the monthly payment, and when each payment drafts.

Here is the kind of answer that comes back:

Outstanding balance on the books is $25,000 under Notes Payable, but the monthly debt service is what pinches cash flow: $5,342 per month across two commitments.

That second number matters more than the first. A $25,000 balance sounds manageable. Losing $5,342 of cash in the last week of every month is what makes three weeks out of four feel tight.

Frank will also flag any instances where your notes disagree with the bank. In this example the owner's strategic notes mentioned a $60,000 monthly obligation, while synced records showed a consistent $3,200 draft. Resolve that kind of gap before you plan around it.

The order in which you pay off debts should account for the cash you need to keep running. Tell Frank your goals and let the plan work around them:

I want to pay down my debt without running my cash too low. My goal is to keep at least $[amount] in available cash and [other goal, for example, hire a rep by year-end]. Given my current cash position and net cash flow, in what order should I pay these off, and how much should I put toward them each month? These are the interest rates of each debt.

With available cash of $86,824.31 and average net cash flow of +$13,712.17/month ($71,810.47 in against $58,098.29 out), Frank returned a three-phase plan:

The value here is that the plan is built on your actual cash flow, not a generic rule about paying off debt as fast as possible.

Add in a table to any prompt, and Frank returns a real table rather than prose. For example:

Show me the amortization schedule for this loan over 3 years, in a table.

You get a row per month with beginning balance, monthly payment, principal paid, interest paid, and ending balance, plus a total for each year. Here are the first three months of a $100,000 loan at 6% over three years:

The schedule runs for all 36 months and shows why interest is front-loaded:

$5,146.93 in interest in year one versus $1,159.31 in year three. Total interest across the three years is $9,519.01, so $109,519.01 leaves the business to retire $100,000 of principal.

To get it into a spreadsheet, select the table in the conversation, copy it, and paste into Google Sheets or Excel. It arrives as columns and rows you can sort and total, because it is a real table rather than a picture of one. If everything lands in a single column, use Data → Split text to columns in Sheets or Data → Text to Columns in Excel.

The same trick works for any output you want to keep: a payoff schedule, a list of every loan payment in the last 12 months, a month-by-month cash projection.

Two methods, and the difference is money against momentum.

Avalanche pays the highest interest rate first, regardless of balance. Minimums on everything else, every spare dollar at the most expensive debt. This costs the least in interest and gets you debt-free soonest.

Snowball pays the smallest balance first, regardless of rate. It costs more in total interest, but each payoff removes that loan's minimum payment, so your mandatory monthly bill drops sooner.

With three lenders, the orders look like this:

Avalanche order: Lender #1, then #3, then #2.

Snowball order: Lender #3, then #2, then #1.

Ask Frank to build the schedule:

I want to pay off all my debts by [date]. Here are my debts: [lender, balance, interest rate, minimum payment for each]. Calculate the total monthly payment required, and give me a schedule that pays down the highest-interest debts first while still covering the minimums on the others.

For the three lenders above, clearing $105,000 by December 2027 needs $7,025/month over 16 months. Minimums account for $1,200 of that, and the remaining $5,825 goes at the 12% loan until it clears, then cascades to the 9%, then the 7%. Against an average net cash flow of +$13,712.17, that leaves roughly +$6,687/month to run the business on.

Avalanche wins on paper. It is cheaper and faster; if your revenue is steady and you do not need to see results to keep going, take it.

The catch is that avalanche often starts with your largest balance. In the example above, that is $50,000 at 12%, and it takes eight months before a single account hits zero. Nothing visible changes for most of a year. Plenty of owners lose interest well before then, even though they are saving real money.

Snowball is built for that. Clearing the $20,000 loan first takes your mandatory monthly payments from $1,200 down to $800 straight away, and one account is gone. If a slow month is your biggest worry, that lower fixed obligation is worth more to you than the interest you gave up. And the account that closed is proof the plan works, which is what keeps people paying.

A rough guide: if cash flow volatility is your main stressor, or you have abandoned a payoff plan before, go snowball. If your revenue is predictable and you are comfortable watching a spreadsheet rather than a scoreboard, go avalanche. The method you actually stick to beats the one that looks better on paper.

Before accepting an offer, run it past Frank:

I've been offered $[amount] at [rate]% annual interest. If I take it, what will it cost me per month in principal and interest to pay it off within [term], and can my cash flow absorb that?

For $100,000 at 6% over three years, the payment is $3,042.19/month. That increases total monthly debt service from $5,342 to $8,384.19, leaving about $10,670/month of surplus against an average net cash flow of $13,712.17. The $100,000 also lands in the account immediately, taking available cash to $186,824.31.

Cheap money can also retire expensive money.

In the three-lender example, a 6% loan could pay off Lender #1 at 12% and Lender #3 at 9%, and put $30,000 toward Lender #2, replacing three fragmented payments with one at $3,042/month and freeing roughly $4,000/month in cash flow. That is debt consolidation, and Frank will show you the interest saved.

Frank gives you the numbers. Whether the borrowing is right depends on what the money does once it arrives, and it is worth running the plan past your accountant before you commit.

A plan you check once is a plan you drift off. Save it as a briefing, and Frank does the checking.

A briefing prompt that works well for debt paydown:

Give me a weekly debt update. For each loan, show the current balance, the payments made this month, and the principal remaining. Compare my available cash to my $[target] target. Tell me whether I'm still on track to be debt-free by [date], and flag any upcoming month where my net cash flow won't cover the planned payment.

Swap in your own target and date.

Full setup details are here: Setting Up CFO Briefings.

Ask Frank what you owe and what it costs you each month, then ask for a paydown plan built on your own cash position rather than a generic rule. Add "in a table" whenever you want to paste the numbers into a spreadsheet, and save a weekly briefing so the plan checks itself while you get on with running the business.