Businesses who have applied for the government's furlough scheme will receive payment by the end of April.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed the scheme should be open for applications on April 20.
There will then be a period of "several days" between applications and successful claimants receiving cash.
Mr Sunak said Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick was "intensifying his efforts and scrutiny" to make sure councils were providing grants to firms hit by the impact of coronavirus.
The Chancellor insisted there had been "enormous improvements" in the loan scheme for companies and said staff at lenders had worked over Easter on the backlog of applications and there should be "an acceleration in those numbers in the coming days".
He said: "We are keeping a careful eye on that as you would imagine and I am in close contact with the bank CEOs."
Mr Sunak said the furlough scheme "might cover millions of people" and "we had to build a brand new system from scratch to handle that".
What are furloughed workers?
Furloughed employees are workers on a temporary leave of absence but have not been made redundant.
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is designed to support employers whose operations have been severely affected by coronavirus (COVID-19).
Employers can use a portal to claim for 80% of these (furloughed) employees’ usual monthly wage costs.
