Sale preparation: books that hold up when someone buys.
A buyer’s team will examine the same records you use to run the business. What they find, and how long it takes them to find it, moves the price.
What gets done
Restate the history on a consistent basis
Three years of accrual-basis financials prepared the same way, period to period. Cash-basis books and mid-stream method changes are the first thing a diligence team flags, and the hardest to fix under time pressure.
Recognize revenue as it is earned
Revenue matched to when work was performed, unbilled receivables tracked by customer and contract, and deferred revenue isolated.
Document every cost added back to profit
Owner compensation above market, personal expenses, and genuine one-off costs are all legitimate adjustments, but only if every one is supportable from the records. Undocumented add-backs get removed, not negotiated.
Build the working-capital picture
A rolling twelve-month view of receivables, unbilled work, payables, and accrued payroll, with seasonality visible. This is the number most often argued over between an offer and a closing.
Questions we get asked
When should this start?
Twelve to twenty-four months before a sale, if you can. Early enough to restate historical periods properly.
Is this the same as a quality-of-earnings review?
No. A QoE is performed by the buyer's team. This is the work that happens beforehand so their review finds less.
What if a sale is only a possibility?
The same work makes the business easier to run and easier to borrow against. Nothing here is wasted if the sale never happens.
Where does Averan come in?
Sale preparation gets the books into shape. The rest of the transaction work, the EBITDA bridge, the agreed level of cash left in the business at sale, the banker-ready package and the process itself, runs through Path to Sale.
Where this hands off
Averan prepares the books. The transaction itself (the EBITDA bridge, the agreed level of cash left in the business at sale, banker-ready financials, and the process management) runs through Sale preparation, a structured program for founders twelve to twenty-four months out from a transaction.
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Related work
- Fractional CFO for PE-backed portfolio companies, sponsor reporting, the 100-day plan and the numbers a board asks for
Also here
The detail behind this
- Preparing a GovCon company for salethe version with contracts attached