Real cases from hundreds of Quality of Earnings engagements — fraud, manipulation, and accounting tricks volume QoE shops don’t catch. Before you press play, know this: every story below is a category of risk a $5K QoE was never built to find.
THE TEST
Spend 15 mins, watch 3 reaction videos. If you’d catch all 3, pick a cheaper solution.
The Test · 3 videos · ~15 min
One glance, one decision. If yes, take the cheaper route. If no, you need Guardian.
The $4M Mistake Most Business Buyers Make
How I Caught a Seller’s $600K Lie
She Bragged. Then She Went Broke.
VERDICT TIME
Be honest. Your answer changes which path makes sense for your deal.
No matching stories found.
Let’s Try Just One More QuickBooks File. The one with $1M of fake revenue. When the books keep changing, that’s a major red flag.
Seller took critical data out of QuickBooks & moved it to ‘his own proprietary Excel-based systems.’ Sales, COGS, and Gross Margin in QB. OpEx in Excel. No way to trace or audit EBITDA. Double entry accounting in real time is critical for QoE.
Seller only would allow ‘on-site’ diligence for 4 weeks. Effectively eliminating any credible provider because that’s impossible at a cost that a SMB Buyer will pay. The whole setup was designed to restrict access to key data.
Cloud based version of QuickBooks ‘not working’ during due diligence visit. Cloud based softwares have 99.999% uptime requirements. If QB had been down for 8 hours, it would have been on the front page of CNN.
Seller artificially booked revenue for expected future work and hid the entries in accounts receivable. A classic manipulation to inflate current period revenue.
Seller booked business expenses in capital expenditures expecting buyer not to look closely and miss the EBITDA reduction.
One Brokerage adds 100% of operating expenses to each CIM. They force the Buyer to challenge every single operating expense as ongoing. They hope you give up. We didn’t give up.
Forecast Model Presented as Consolidated Financials. The model is a forecast (made up) while consolidated is historical (actual). A dangerous bait and switch.
Each week brought a new adjustment until there was no company left. Death by a thousand cuts in due diligence.
$200k in marketing mistakes made by a veteran marketing team were added back as if the buyer who was less experienced would make fewer mistakes going forward. Wishful thinking at its finest.
Two divisions covering for each other. When one division fails, the other props it up temporarily, hiding the true performance of each.
Mr Cash and Mr Accrual walk into a bar… Are you dating Ms. Cash Basis or Ms. Accrual Basis? Understanding the difference is critical for accurate financials.
Seller hides his lies about profit under the story that his ‘granddaughter and grandson managed the financials.’ This meant a dripping faucet of data for weeks as the Seller tried to update his story each time a small piece of data came out.
No… The Doctor DID Separate our Siamese Twins. Two separate businesses with separate books not disclosed for 3 weeks. Hidden complexity is never an accident.
Terrible business that claims they ‘just cleaned it up and profit was high now.’ But the numbers couldn’t support it. Lipstick on a pig.
Seller kept lying. Client kept believing and wanting to believe the Seller until it was impossible to complete the QoE. Hope is not a strategy.
CPA doesn’t agree with GAAP reporting (the Standard for accounting). When your accountant doesn’t follow standards, you have a problem.