Who this is for, and the moment they are in
You are buying your first business, or your third, with an SBA 7(a) loan or your own money, and a broker has just sent a CIM. The SDE on page four looks good, the add-backs on page eleven look generous, and you have a week or two before the LOI conversation gets serious. A full quality-of-earnings report from a firm costs five figures and takes two to four weeks, and on a sub-$1M deal the firms will tell you the deal is too small to bother. One searcher who surveyed his peers on deal costs put it plainly: you do not need a full report on a sub-$1M SDE deal unless the accounting practices are suspect. What you need before the LOI is the add-backs read by someone who is not the broker, the P&L checked against the tax returns, the coverage math done at three prices, and a list of questions that would embarrass a weak deal early.
Searchers who read fifty or two hundred CIMs a year are also here; the $99-a-month tier exists so the first look is something you run on every CIM, not a decision.
What you get
Coverage cardfree
Debt-service coverage at the asking price, 10% under and 20% under, computed from the SDE and revenue you paste, with the loan assumptions we used (rate, amortization, equity injection, and the owner salary subtracted from SDE) printed beside the table. The number means nothing without the assumptions, so they always travel together.
CIM first look$149 · two business hours
From the CIM alone: what the document claims and what it leaves out; the add-backs as stated, with the ones that need support named; coverage at three prices on the stated SDE; and ten questions to send the broker before you spend another evening on this deal. It is the memo you read before deciding whether to request financials.
Pre-LOI brief$495 · 24 hours
From the CIM, three years of tax returns and the P&L, ten to fifteen pages. SDE and add-backs reconstructed, each add-back flagged reasonable or questionable with the reason. The P&L tied out to the tax returns, with every gap stated. Revenue concentration, seasonality and owner-dependence signals from what the documents show. A working-capital estimate. The coverage table at three prices. Thirty diligence questions, ranked by how much the answer would change the deal. And a one-page red/yellow/green summary of the findings, which is a list of findings and not a recommendation.
Searcher subscription$99 per month
Unlimited CIM first looks at the same two-business-hour turnaround, for the buyer who reads CIMs in volume.
How it works
You paste three numbers into the card above and the coverage card arrives within one business day. If you want the first look, you reply with the CIM attached and pay; the clock starts when the CIM arrives, between 8am and 8pm Pacific, and the memo is in your inbox within two business hours (a CIM that arrives at night is answered by 10am the next business day). If you want the brief, you send the CIM, the last three years of tax returns and the P&L; if anything is unreadable we tell you before the clock starts, and the brief is in your inbox within 24 hours of readable documents arriving. We work only from what you send. We do not call the seller, the broker or your lender, and nothing in the memo is a fee, a referral or an introduction.
Prices
| Price | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Free | Coverage at three prices from the asking price, SDE and revenue you paste, with the loan assumptions printed, by email within one business day.Free; nothing to refund. |
| $149 | CIM first look, from the CIM alone, inside two business hours: what it claims, what it leaves out, the add-backs as stated, coverage at three prices, and ten questions for the broker.Refunded if the first look is not in your inbox within two business hours of the CIM arriving. |
| $495 | Pre-LOI brief, from the CIM, three years of tax returns and the P&L, inside 24 hours: add-back reconstruction, P&L-to-returns tie-out, concentration and owner-dependence read, working-capital estimate, coverage table, thirty ranked questions, one-page summary.Refunded if the brief is not in your inbox within 24 hours of your readable documents arriving. |
| $99per month | Searcher subscription: unlimited CIM first looks at the same two-business-hour turnaround.Refunded for the month if any first look in it misses its two-business-hour turnaround. |
Why it costs what it costs
The incumbent is the quality-of-earnings report, and its prices are public. ProjectionHub's guide puts a full report at $10,000 to $35,000 for deals between $100,000 and $10 million, taking two to four weeks. A practitioner roundup lists agreed-upon procedures at $5,000 to $10,000, limited scope at $10,000 to $20,000, and full scope at $20,000 to $40,000, with named firms at $12,000 to $15,000 for small deals and one starting at $8,900 for a three-to-four-week turnaround. A survey of sixteen searchers found a median of $40,000 for a full report and under $10,000 for a lighter version. DueDilio, the marketplace that routes buyers to those firms, says deals under $1 million are generally too small for its providers. ProjectionHub itself sells a sniff test for under $1,000.
| What | Price | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| Full quality-of-earnings report (ProjectionHub guide) | $10,000–$35,000 | 2–4 weeks |
| Rapid Diligence (practitioner roundup) | from $8,900 | 3–4 weeks |
| Searcher survey median, full report (n=16) | $40,000 | — |
| ProjectionHub "QoE Sniff Test" | under $1,000 | — |
| This page: CIM first look | $149 | 2 business hours |
| This page: pre-LOI brief | $495 | 24 hours |
None of those reports are what we sell, and the brief does not pretend to be one. It is the reading a careful buyer does before deciding whether the deal deserves one, priced so that doing it on every deal is cheaper than skipping it on the wrong one, and delivered inside the window an LOI conversation actually runs on. The refund conditions are clocks: the memo was in your inbox by the time stated, or the money comes back.
What this is not
- This is not a quality-of-earnings report, an audit, an assurance engagement, or an opinion on value. It is an analysis memo written from the documents you send. Reality Contact, LLC is not a CPA firm.
- This is not financial, legal, or tax advice, and it does not recommend buying or not buying. It states findings and the questions they raise.
- We are not a business broker. We take no fee tied to closing and we do not introduce buyers to sellers or sellers to buyers.
- We work only from what you send. We do not contact the seller, the broker, or your lender.
- Coverage figures are arithmetic on the loan assumptions printed with them. Change the assumptions and the number changes.
- Your lender may still require third-party diligence on this deal. The brief does not replace it.
- Operated by Reality Contact, LLC. Prices in USD. Refund conditions as stated.
Questions buyers ask
- Do I still need a quality-of-earnings report?
- Maybe. Lenders are asking for third-party diligence on more deals, especially larger ones, and if yours does, the brief does not replace it. What the brief does is tell you, before you commission anything or sign an LOI, whether the numbers in the CIM survive contact with the tax returns and what you should be asking.
- What assumptions go into the coverage number?
- A rate, an amortization period, an equity injection and an owner salary subtracted from SDE, all stated beside the table in the reply. If your lender has quoted different terms, send them and we re-run it; the arithmetic is the easy part and the assumptions are the whole argument.
- The seller's financials are scanned PDFs and a spreadsheet. Is that a problem?
- Send them as they are. If something is unreadable we tell you before the 24-hour clock starts, and we say which pages.
- Can you talk to the broker or the seller for me?
- No. The ten questions in the first look and the thirty in the brief are written for you to send. We work only from the documents you give us.
- What does the red/yellow/green page mean?
- It is a one-page index of the findings by how much each would change the deal if the answer is bad: red is a finding that should be resolved before an LOI, yellow is a question for diligence, green is something the documents already support. It is not a verdict on the deal, and it says so at the top.