Femal owner of a small business flips the sign at the entrance of her store to open

American Businesses hoping to participate in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) have less than a month to apply.

The deadline to apply for the program was set to expire at the start of July until President Trump signed a bill that now extends the cutoff to Aug. 8, according to the Journal of Accountancy. Before the bill got to Trump, both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives unanimously supported the measure.

The paycheck protection program helps small businesses by providing them with forgivable loans that they can use to pay their employees and for a few other expenses. With the compliance of the Treasury Department, U.S. Small Business Association released data on how the loan has been provided on July 6. To that point, the loan had supported more than 51 million jobs and more than 80 percent of the people employed by small businesses. At the time of the release, 4.9 million loans had been provided at an average of $100,000 per loan.