# Method > How the candidate list is built, what is checked before a vendor is ranked, and what moves one. Published so a reader can argue with the process instead of guessing at it. ## Two passes that disagree The first pass is desk research: vendor SBA product pages, SBA's own lender pages and FTA notices, dated press releases, trade association material from NAGGL and NADCO, and named trade coverage. The second reads how five AI assistants answer plain buyer questions such as what the best SBA lending software is for a community bank, because that is how a growing share of shortlists now get written. The two passes are kept because they fail differently. Desk research misses products that sell through relationships rather than search. The assistants surface those, and they also recommend residential mortgage systems for 7(a) lending, credit an origination platform with 1502 reporting it never mentions, and name a Lender Service Provider as if it were software. Where the passes disagree, verification decides, and the disagreement is usually written into the vendor's entry. ## What is verified before a vendor is ranked Every factual statement in a vendor entry traces to something published. Where a figure is the vendor's own and nobody else has confirmed it, the entry attributes it rather than stating it flat. Where a figure is old, the entry says how old. - The SBA programs named on the vendor's own SBA page, as distinct from SBA loans in general - Whether E-Tran submission is described as an integration inside the product or as a file export - Which SBA forms the product generates, by number - Whether eligibility checks are named steps or implied by the phrase compliance - Whether monthly 1502 preparation, secondary market handling and servicing are published capabilities - Named lender institutions, with size where the vendor or a named publication gives it - Whether a product the assistants still recommend is sold under that name by that company today ## How the order is decided Six criteria appear on every ranked page: SBA program coverage, E-Tran and SBA forms, eligibility and SOP handling, underwriting depth, servicing and 1502 reporting, and verified named lenders. The candidate order starts from how consistently the five assistants recommend a product for the page's own question, then verification and the criteria adjust it. A widely recommended product whose SBA page names no program and no lender will sit below one that publishes both. The reader the page is written for sets the weighting. On the servicing page, 1502 and secondary market handling are weighted first; SPARK and Biz2X, which publish no servicing, are absent, and the platform vendors that carry the loan into portfolio tools without publishing 1502 are kept and say so. On the underwriting page, spreading, affiliate analysis and the memo count for more than E-Tran. That is why the same vendors appear in a different order from page to page. ## What moves a vendor A named lender reference. A program added to the SBA page. A 1502 capability published rather than claimed by an assistant. A rebrand or acquisition, of which this category has had two in eighteen months. Every ranked page carries the date its sources were checked, and that date is what the sitemap publishes. Marketing does not move a ranking, and neither does a vendor asking. --- **Source:** https://sbalendingsoftware.com/editorial-process · **Markdown:** https://sbalendingsoftware.com/editorial-process.md · **Agent index:** https://sbalendingsoftware.com/llms.txt SBA Lending Software. Software research for 7(a) and 504 lenders. Product names and trademarks are the property of their owners. Rankings are editorial opinion; the facts printed with them are sourced. Nothing here is legal, regulatory or credit advice, and none of it substitutes for the current SOP.