DAYTON — What small businesses need, and what they get, aren’t always the same thing.

U.S. Small Business Administration officers say they know this. Several were in Dayton last week to talk with banking representatives about what they say are improvements to a SBA lending program.

Lenders say some of the changes are welcome. But they also say they’re ready to loan money regardless. Finding credit-worthy loan applicants is difficult, though.

And small businesses say they’re not always getting the tools they need.

The paradox for small companies is it often seems they need to prove they don’t need a loan in order to get one.

Christian Prince, founder and chief technology officer of Dayton supply chain services provider Acclimate Technologies, said the SBA continues to seek better quarterly results from his company before agreeing to offer a loan.

“I’ve been turned down from the SBA side three times now,” Prince said.“If you need a loan, you have to go to (a venture capital investor) or higher interest money.”

Small businesses and their advocates say what they often need are smaller bridge loans to tide them over until receivables are paid. It’s that 90-day span between service and payment that often hurts smaller companies, said Barbara Hayde, president of The Entrepreneurs Center, a Dayton business incubator.

“I could hire more employees, but I have a cash flow problem,” Hayde said is the complaint she sometimes hears from the businesses her center helps.

The SBA has updated its CAPlines lending program to allow borrowers to use certain contracts and accounts receivable as collateral in seeking a loan, administrators said last week. The agency said it also streamlined paperwork.

Only 1,300 businesses used CAPlines in the program’s first 15 years, said Patrick Kelley, an SBA senior advisor who meet with local lenders. That was too few, he said.

“It’s didn’t work,” Kelley said. “The (CAPline) changes reflect recognition of that fact.”

But Michael VanBuskirk, president of the Ohio Bankers League, a non-profit co-op owned by the Ohio banking industry, said state banks have plenty of money to loan. What they don’t have, he said, are enough “credit-worthy consumers and small businesses.”

SBA loans, while helpful, usually help businesses “on the margin,” VanBuskirk said. “The SBA doesn’t help if the business clearly isn’t going to pay the money back,” he said.

“This isn’t a silver bullet,” Kelley said. But he contends the SBA is doing what it can in a difficult economy.

“We didn’t wait for Congress to act,” he said. “We worked within our existing authority.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.