Preparing Your Financials for a Sale

The first thing every sophisticated buyer does is order a quality-of-earnings analysis. The cleaner your books going in, the less the QofE will haircut your reported EBITDA — and the less negotiating leverage the buyer gains.

Minimum standard for a sale-ready company: monthly accrual financials for 36 trailing months, a reconciled balance sheet, customer-level revenue detail, and a clean separation between business and personal expenses.

If you are running QuickBooks on cash basis with mixed personal expenses, plan for 60–90 days of cleanup before going to market. The investment pays back many times over in lifted purchase price and tightened working capital pegs.