Prove what a business really earns before the deal is on the line. On the sell side, get ahead of the retrade before you list. On the buy side, know what you are buying before you wire. Operator-grade, independent, and built for lower-middle-market Indiana deals, roughly $500K to $3M EBITDA (up to about $30M in revenue). It is our sweet spot, not a hard limit; if your deal is near the edges, ask.
Quality of Earnings reviews Ryan (CPA) has run from the buyer’s side. He knows what the other team looks for, because he has been it.
Diligence findings are the leading cause. A clean, defensible earnings picture keeps you off that list. (Industry, directional, 2025.)
Around 90% of PE-backed sellers commission one before going to market. Barely half of founder-led sellers do. That gap is the opening. (GF Data / industry, 2025.)
Most reviews at this deal size come back as a checklist, and a buyer reads it and still does not know if the earnings are real, or what to do if they are not. We run the numbers the way a skeptical buyer does, then we go further: we have actually run businesses, so we can tell you which problems are fixable, which ones move the price, and which ones kill the deal.
Ryan has run more than 100 of these from the buyer’s side. Jared has run operations through a $200M sale. You get both lenses on your deal: the numbers, proven, and the judgment on whether they hold.
We tie every dollar you claim you made to the bank account. Bank statements do not lie, and it is the first thing a serious buyer runs.
Every add-back has to clear three gates. Real: the cost goes away at close. Provable: a statement or contract backs it. Defensible: you can explain it to a skeptical buyer out loud. Fail one, it comes off. No source, no add-back.
Recurring versus one-off, and who your top customers really are. Concentration is one of the first things a buyer discounts for, and a lender may flag a single customer over 15 to 20%.
The quiet deal-killer, and the gas you are expected to leave in the tank at close. We nail the peg before you sign, so you do not get a surprise repayment demand 90 days after the wire clears.
A smaller number we can defend beats a bigger one that collapses three weeks into diligence.
Numbers tell you what happened. Customers tell you whether it lasts. As part of our operational and commercial diligence, we talk to the top customers directly, not just read the concentration schedule. It is the single thing that separates our diligence from a report, and it is exactly what acquirers tell us they cannot do themselves without tipping off the target. This is Jared-led.
On the sell side, a QoE is the trial run for the buyer’s diligence. We stage your own data room, pressure-test the numbers, and surface what a buyer would flag while there is still time to fix it and while you still have leverage. The two deal-killers are time and surprise. Both are removable. A document you can turn around in a day signals a real business. Weeks signals the opposite.
Price is roughly adjusted earnings times a multiple, so every dollar that moves in diligence gets multiplied. At a 6x multiple, $200,000 of add-backs a buyer rejects is more than $1.2M off the price. Catching those threads first, on your schedule, is worth many times the fee. Illustrative, never guaranteed.
One more distinction that matters: the price is set on earnings, but your take-home is set by what survives the QoE and the working-capital true-up. We protect both.
A fast Red-Flag Review flags the deal-breakers before you spend on a full QoE. Screening several deals at once, or getting ready to list? Start here.
The full Quality of Earnings, plus operational and commercial diligence and the customer calls. Buy-side or sell-side.
The operator who ran your diligence does not disappear. If you want, we stay on to help run what you bought.
Standard turnaround about three weeks from complete data. We reply to every inquiry within one business day.
One fixed fee, quoted up front after a short scoping call, so you know the number before you commit. No meter running, no surprises. Where it starts:
Final fee depends on the complexity of the books. We send a scoped number, usually within one business day.
A plain-English findings readout, the normalized SDE and Adjusted EBITDA bridge from the tax return, the tested add-back schedule (including the ones we reject), the proof-of-cash reconciliation, a revenue and concentration view, and the supporting databook. Ask for a redacted sample and we will show you the format.
We use AI to speed up the routine work so our people spend their time on the analysis and the calls that matter. The opinion on your deal is human, an operator and a CPA. And you own your data. No lock-in.
Send us the deal. We will tell you the truth, fast. We are independent: we work for you, and we do not stay on unless you ask us to.