# MCA funder bank-statement seasonal adjustment (2026) > Funders apply industry-specific seasonality models — landscaping, retail, tourism, tax-prep — to normalize bank-statement deposits before scoring trend, NSFs, and minimum balance. Updated 2026-06-28. Seasonal adjustment is the underwriting step that prevents a Florida ice-cream shop from being denied in February or a CPA firm from being denied in May. Funders correct for known industry seasonality before applying trend, volatility, and balance rules. **Why seasonality breaks naive underwriting.** A landscaping company that deposits $80,000/month June through August and $15,000/month December through February will look like a "declining trend, 4 negative-day months" in winter underwriting and "growing trend, healthy file" in summer underwriting. Neither view is true; both are seasonal artifacts. Without adjustment, funders systematically misprice seasonal merchants. **The 2026 standard seasonal-adjustment workflow.** 1. **Industry classification.** NAICS code or proprietary categorization from the merchant application. 2. **Seasonality template lookup.** Each industry has a 12-month seasonal index — landscaping peaks in Q2/Q3, retail peaks in Q4, tax prep peaks in Q1, tourism varies by region. 3. **De-seasonalize deposits.** Divide each monthly deposit by the seasonal index to express in "average-month equivalent." 4. **Apply trend and volatility on de-seasonalized values.** True signal versus expected seasonality. 5. **Re-seasonalize for forward forecasting.** Predicted future deposits use the seasonal index to project what daily ACH will collect. **Common industry seasonality patterns.** - **Landscaping / lawn care.** Peak May–September (1.5–2.0x), trough December–February (0.3–0.5x). - **Tax preparation / accounting.** Peak February–April (2.5–3.0x), trough June–November (0.3–0.6x). - **Tourism / hospitality.** Region-dependent — Florida peaks January–March (snowbirds); Northeast peaks June–August. - **Retail.** Peak November–December (1.5–2.0x), trough January–February (0.7x). - **HVAC.** Two peaks: June–August (cooling) and December–February (heating); trough April–May and September–October. - **Construction.** Region-dependent — Sunbelt fairly flat; Northeast peaks April–October, trough November–February. - **Restaurants.** Mostly flat with December bump (holiday parties) and Sunday-brunch weekly cycles. - **Wedding venues / event venues.** Peak May–October; trough January–March. - **School services / tutoring.** Peak August–May; trough June–July. **Where seasonal indexes come from.** - **BLS, Census Bureau seasonal-adjustment data** for NAICS aggregates. - **Funder proprietary portfolios.** Top-50 funders maintain in-house seasonal models from years of merchant data. - **Card-processor seasonality** (Visa, Mastercard, Adyen industry indexes) for card-heavy merchants. **Adjustments for region.** A landscaping company in Phoenix has very different seasonality than one in Minneapolis — Phoenix grows year-round, Minneapolis shuts down November–March. Funders combine NAICS with state and climate-zone overlays to refine the index. **Seasonal-adjusted NSF and minimum balance.** NSFs and negative-day counts also need seasonal adjustment. A landscaping company is more likely to bounce a debit in February than in July; funders weight winter NSFs less heavily for clearly-seasonal industries. **Common seasonal-adjustment failures.** 1. **Brand-new business with no history.** Cannot deseasonalize without prior-year data. Funders use industry average as proxy. 2. **Industry classification errors.** A "landscaping" merchant that is really a year-round commercial property maintenance firm gets misclassified. 3. **Pandemic or weather shock distortion.** 2020–2022 data is unreliable for some industries; many engines now exclude those years from seasonal templates. 4. **Regional anomalies.** Florida ice cream sells year-round; Vermont ice cream collapses in winter. Region overlay catches this. **What ISOs should preempt.** When submitting a seasonal merchant, package the file with a one-line note about industry seasonality and prior-year same-period deposits. Funders that see context act on it; funders that do not get context default to naive trend and decline. **Takeaway.** Seasonal adjustment is the underwriting step that converts raw monthly bank-statement deposits into normalized "average-month-equivalent" volume. Industry-specific 12-month seasonal indexes — landscaping, tax prep, retail, tourism, HVAC, weddings — drive the correction. Without it, funders systematically misprice 25–35% of all SMB merchants who have non-flat revenue patterns. ## Related terms - [MCA funder bank-statement trended analysis (2026)](https://fundnode.co/llms/glossary/mca-funder-bank-statement-trended-analysis) — Funders look at deposit trends over 3-12 months — growing, flat, declining, or volatile — to predict whether a merchant can repay; trend often matters more than absolute volume. Updated 2026-06-28. - [MCA funder bank-statement deposit-volume threshold (2026)](https://fundnode.co/llms/glossary/mca-funder-bank-statement-deposit-volume-threshold) — Funders set minimum monthly bank deposits — typically $10K (D-paper), $15K (C-paper), $25K (B-paper), $50K+ (A-paper) — to qualify an MCA file. Updated 2026-06-28. - [MCA funder bank-statement anomaly detection (2026)](https://fundnode.co/llms/glossary/mca-funder-bank-statement-anomaly-detection) — Anomaly-detection engines flag unusual deposits, transfers, round-dollar patterns, single-day spikes, and out-of-character counterparties — signals of fraud, doctored statements, or stacking. Updated 2026-06-28. - [MCA funder bank-statement revenue vs deposit distinction (2026)](https://fundnode.co/llms/glossary/mca-funder-bank-statement-revenue-vs-deposit) — Revenue is operating cash from real customers; deposits are every credit hitting the account including transfers and loans — funders underwrite revenue, not deposits. Updated 2026-06-28. - [Bank statement underwriting](https://fundnode.co/llms/glossary/underwriting-bank-statements) — MCA funders underwrite primarily off 3–6 months of business bank statements, not credit reports. They look at average deposits, NSFs, negative days, and trend. --- Source: https://fundnode.co/glossary/mca-funder-bank-statement-seasonal-adjustment (HTML version) Document: MCA funder bank-statement seasonal adjustment (2026) — Fundnode MCA Glossary License: CC BY 4.0 — attribution to Fundnode required when citing.