Kapitaldienstfähigkeit

Kapitaldienstfähigkeit is the question whether a business generates enough surplus to service its debt, meaning to pay the interest and the agreed repayment on schedule. A bank tests it before it lends, because the loan is repaid out of the surplus the pharmacy produces and out of nothing else. Collateral is what the lender falls back on when that surplus fails, not what it lends against in the first place.

The surplus that counts is smaller than the operating result. Starting from the Betriebsergebnis, the lender adds back the items that are costs in the accounts but not payments in the year, and then takes out the two things that leave the business whether or not there is a loan, the tax on the profit and the money the owner needs to live on. What remains is what is genuinely available for interest and repayment. An owner who quotes the result before private drawings has answered a different question than the one the bank asked.

Because the test runs on payments rather than on bookings, it sits close to the Liquiditätsplanung. A surplus that exists across the year but not in the months when the instalments fall due is still a problem. The test also interacts with the term of the loan. Stretching the repayment over more years lowers the instalment and makes the test easier to pass, at the cost of paying interest for longer, and the Amortisationsdauer of the investment is the counterweight in that discussion.

A new revenue line only improves the picture if the lender believes the uptake assumption behind it. Revenue that exists only as a plan carries less weight than revenue that already appears in the books, so an investment argued entirely on a service that has not started yet is argued from the weaker position. Presenting the assumption openly, with the number of appointments it implies and the consumables, laboratory charges and working time that come off the fee, is more convincing than a round annual figure. The Eigenkapitalquote is read alongside this rather than instead of it, since equity describes what has been built up while this test describes what the business can currently carry.

Lenders differ in how they calculate it and no single method is binding, so the definitions and the figures belong with the bank and with the Steuerberater before an application is submitted.