Profit & loss statements: last 3 years plus year-to-date
Every headline number we produce is reconciled back to these. If it doesn't tie to your own accounts, it doesn't ship.
Balance sheets: last 4 period ends
Four dates, not three. Anything measured against an average balance, days sales outstanding, inventory days, return on assets, needs an opening balance as well as a closing one, so four balance sheets produce three years of ratios and three produce two.
Cash flow statements: last 3 years
The statement most often left out, and the one that carries depreciation, capital spending, the movement in working capital and what was taken out of the business. Without it, EBITDA has to be estimated rather than derived, and cash conversion cannot be measured at all.
The accountant's report that came with the statements
Audit, review, compilation or nothing at all: this single page decides how much weight every figure in the analysis can carry, and it is stated openly in the report rather than assumed.
Business tax returns: last 3 years(helpful, not essential)
Corroborates the statements from an independent direction, and where the books are kept on a tax basis it is often the more complete record.
Revenue broken out by product or service
Without this, profitability can only be assessed for the business as a whole, which is rarely where the answer is.
Revenue broken out by location(helpful, not essential)
Lets us compare sites fairly and see which model is worth repeating.
Payroll or headcount by role
Labor is usually the largest controllable cost and sets your real capacity ceiling. Roles and cost are enough; we do not need individual names.
Owner compensation and one-off or personal costs
We adjust for these before analyzing so the underlying economics are visible. Standard practice, and not a judgment: a rough schedule is fine.
Debt and lease schedule
Lender, balance, rate, maturity, monthly payment, and any personal guarantee. Leases sit alongside debt because a long lease behaves like borrowing whether or not it is on the balance sheet.
Fixed asset or depreciation schedule
Separates what was actually spent on equipment and build-out from the depreciation charge, which is what makes capital intensity and maintenance spending visible.
Receivables and payables aging(helpful, not essential)
Tests the collection and payment days the statements imply, and shows concentration: one customer at ninety days is a different business from thirty customers at thirty.
Inventory listing and how it is valued(helpful, not essential)
Inventory is the balance-sheet line most often carried at a number nobody has tested, and it moves both margin and working capital.
Deferred revenue, memberships or prepaid packages(helpful, not essential)
Money taken for work not yet done is a liability, not revenue. Where it is calculated on a spreadsheet, that spreadsheet is usually the largest unaudited number in the business.
Related-party arrangements: rent, loans, family on payroll
A building leased from an entity you own, or a relative on the payroll, is not wrong and is not hidden. It just has to be normalized out before the earnings mean anything to a lender or a buyer.
Owner distributions or dividends by year(helpful, not essential)
In a pass-through business this is where the profit actually went, and it is invisible on the P&L.
One-off items in the last three years(helpful, not essential)
A lawsuit, a move, a failed hire, a relief payment, an insurance recovery. Anything that happened once and will not repeat, so it does not get read as a trend.
Top ten customers as a share of revenue(helpful, not essential)
Concentration is priced by every lender and every buyer, and it is the most common reason an otherwise healthy business is discounted.
Anything material that happened after the last period end(helpful, not essential)
A signed lease, a large order, a lost account, equipment ordered. The statements stop at a date; decisions do not.
Chart of accounts, or how cost of delivery is separated from overhead(helpful, not essential)
Determines whether we can split what it costs to deliver the work from what it costs to keep the doors open.
Transaction-level export: date, amount, customer ID
The single most useful file you can send. It is what makes repeat rate, lifetime value and seasonality measurable rather than estimated.
Current price list, including discounts and packages
Needed to model what happens to profit if you change price, mix or terms.
Customer list with addresses or ZIP codes
Addresses are converted to map coordinates and then deleted; the analysis holds no personal details. This is what shows where your next customers are.
Staff list by role, showing who can do what
Roles and cover, not names and appraisals. It is what lets us price key-person risk, the revenue exposed if a role goes dark, instead of just describing it.
License, certification or qualification register(helpful, not essential)
Where the law or a certification decides who may do the billable work, qualified headcount is a hard ceiling on volume, and the lead time to add one is often the real constraint.
Marketing spend by channel or area(helpful, not essential)
Turns 'where do customers come from' into a cost per customer you can act on.
List of locations: address, opened when, size
The basis for trade areas, catchment and any site comparison.
Read-only access to your accounting system(helpful, not essential)
Faster and more accurate than exports, and it means we stop asking you for files. Read-only: nothing can be changed.
Read-only access to POS / CRM / marketing platforms
Needed to wire your Scoreboard to live data rather than a monthly manual upload.
Three to five people available for a 45-minute conversation
The numbers tell us what happened. These conversations tell us why, and they routinely surface the thing no report would have found.
Send what you have to hand. Messy or partial is normal and is not a blocker. We will come back with a short, specific list of anything still worth chasing.
