For people buying a small business
Decide whether a business is worth buying — before you fall in love with it.
Gather the numbers, the story and the financing for every business you are looking at. The earnings, the real cost of the debt and the awkward questions all live in one place, one file per company.
Everything a buyer keeps on a legal pad, done properly
Read a P&L from a photo or PDF
Upload the statement or snap a picture on your phone. Every line item is pulled out, sorted and ready to review.
Adjusted EBITDA and SDE
Flag owner salary, personal cars, one-off legal fees and other add-backs. Margins and earnings recalculate as you tick them.
True cost of borrowing
Put lenders side by side: origination and guaranty fees, interest-only periods, balloons and prepayment penalties folded into one real annual rate.
Diligence checklist
Every business starts with the questions the HBR Guide tells buyers to ask, from customer concentration to quality of earnings.
One file per business
Keep each target completely separate, with its own numbers, notes and stage — and compare them from the shelf.
Bring in your partners
Invite a searcher, accountant or investor by email as an editor or a read-only reviewer.
Built around the questions buyers are told to ask
The scoring and the checklist follow the guidance in the HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: dull and durable businesses, repeat revenue, low customer concentration, an owner the business can survive without, honest earnings, and debt the cash flow can carry.
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