Stacked debt is not a personality. It is a sequence.
Facility one was going to be "just until the VAT quarter". It collected daily. The residual could not pay wages. Facility two arrived to "smooth cashflow". It collected weekly from the same account. HMRC is now late. Facility three is being sold as a restructure. It is another collector.
Each broker took a fee. Each lender took security. Each personal guarantee was "just this one". The current account is a junction box. Nobody is looking at the file. Everybody is looking at the commission.
Strata packages files. We do not lend. The only useful sentence on a stacked file is: stop adding collectors. Everything else is order of operations.
How a stack is built
It almost never starts with a villain. It starts with a hole that was real — a slow debtor, a tax quarter, a machine, a bad season — and a product that was fast. Fast products collect fast. The residual is smaller. The next hole appears sooner. The same shop, or a shop that bought your mobile from the first shop, has a second product. You sign because Friday is payroll.
By the third facility, the original hole is a rounding error. The stack is the hole.
Warehouse language for this is "we'll restructure the existing agreements". Honest language is "we will add a product, take a fee, and leave the old collectors in place unless someone actually refinances them out". If the new money is not used to clear the old collectors, you have not restructured. You have stacked. Warehouse brokers. Products that finish companies.
Check 01
A broker offers to "restructure" two existing sweeps by adding a third facility. What is that?
Restructure means the old collectors leave. A new collector on the same cash is a stack.
What the cash actually does
Draw it. One page.
- Opening bank.
- Trading receipts.
- Each collector, by name, by amount, by frequency.
- VAT, PAYE, wages, rent.
- What is left.
If what is left is a negative on a quiet week, the stack does not fit the trade. A fourth collector will not make the residual positive. It will make the negative happen earlier in the week.
Directors often "know" this and still sign, because the alternative feels like failure. The alternative is an adult process: HMRC on a schedule you can keep, licensed advice on whether the company is still a going concern, and — if it is — one structure that replaces the stack instead of feeding it.
Check 02
Why draw a quiet-week cash page before you speak to anyone?
The quiet week is the truth. Best-week stories are how stacks get sold.
Security that thinks it is alone
Each lender's document was drafted as if they were the only charge-holder. All-monies. Additional security on demand. Cross-default. A personal guarantee that continues. Terms that should stop the pen.
On a stack, those clauses meet each other. Cross-default means one miss becomes a simultaneous acceleration. All-monies means a refinance of "just this line" does not release the house. Three lenders may all believe they have a claim on the same book debts. Priority is not a vibe. It is the register, the assignments, and the order of creation. A packager who does not map that is not packaging. They are typing.
Check 03
Three lenders each have all-monies and cross-default wording. What is the practical effect?
Stack plus those clauses is a simultaneous problem. Map priority and releases in writing.
HMRC in the stack
HMRC is not "another facility", but they are in the cash. A broken Time to Pay plus two sweeps is a petition waiting for a diary date. Using a new sweep to "catch up HMRC" and then missing HMRC anyway is the pattern in the Time to Pay lesson. File, offer a schedule that works without a fantasy refinance, then deal with the stack. Do not reverse that because a broker said HMRC likes to see new money. HMRC likes to see money arriving.
Since 2020, certain VAT, PAYE and NICs are secondary preferential in an insolvency. A refinance model that treats HMRC as ordinary unsecured is an old model.
Check 04
Using a new sweep to "catch up HMRC", then missing HMRC anyway, does what?
HMRC wants money arriving, not a new Direct Debit competing with them. File and schedule first.
Personal guarantees on a stack
Each "just this one" is continuing until it is released in writing. Three facilities can be three guarantees, or one all-monies guarantee that already covered the later products. Ask for a map: who has your signature, on which document, for which lender, and what it takes to release it. If nobody can draw that map, you are signing blind.
Spouses who ticked a box in a broker's office are in this map too. They need their own advice.
The sequence that stops the digging
Not a product. An order.
- Stop signing. No renewal fee, no third sweep, no "soft search" pack to eight shops.
- Write the map. Collectors, HMRC, security, guarantees, quiet-week cash.
- Free advice. Business Debtline for the personal side. A licensed insolvency practitioner if the company may not be a going concern. Help that is actually there.
- HMRC as a fact. Filed, scheduled, or in a formal process. Not a rumour a broker will "include".
- One structure that replaces collectors, if a structure exists that the trade can actually bear. That is packaging. It is slower than a warehouse. It is supposed to be.
- If no such structure exists, the honest product is a formal insolvency process, not a faster collector. Directors who take that step with advice are doing the Sequana job. Directors who add a fourth sweep are not. Directors in the danger zone.
Check 05
What is the first move on a stacked file?
The next signature is the hole. The map is the file. Packaging comes after.
What "replace" means
The new facility, if there is one, pays out the sweeps. The old collectors' Direct Debits die. The new collections are ones the quiet week can stand. Security is released or properly subordinated, in writing. Guarantees you did not mean to keep are released, in writing. If the term sheet does not do those things, it is a stack with a new logo.
This is exactly the file Strata is built to package: one structure that actually clears the collectors, not a fourth one stacked on top. We map every facility, the HMRC position and every guarantee before we go near a lender, so the term sheet you are shown can genuinely replace the stack, not just rename it. We do not lend, and we will not tell you that you are eligible before we have seen the numbers — but if the shape exists, we know which CDFIs and lenders can hold it.
If you only remember one line from this handbook: the next facility is the hole, until the old collectors are actually gone.
Check 06
When is a new facility actually a replacement, not a stack?
Replace means the old collectors leave. Everything else is branding.