Provenance Diligence
Log in
A Lisbon street: a yellow tram, people walking, tiled houses

Buying a business?
See what comes with it.

Debts, the lease, the licences, the staff — we read the state records and write down, line by line, what becomes yours. €550, report in 24 hours on working days.

From you: a link to the listing or the name of the business, the country and your email. No papers.

We work from the public records and do not contact the seller.

Start my check

No payment now. We answer within 2 working hours whether we take it.

A finished report, the same one you would receive. Page for page.

Read a full report

Opens in full. No email, no password.

Free extension · Chrome and Edge

Before you call the seller, see what the listing leaves out.

A free extension for anyone buying a business. A check of a business needs 12 things. When the extension spots a business for sale, a small box in the corner of the page shows how many of them the listing answers. Press “Download PDF”, and you have a report on all 12: what the listing says, and what it does not say. Found other businesses on other sites? Save them all in one account, My list.

Add to Chrome — free Add to Edge — free

What you get

  • A report you keep. A PDF with the listing’s name, a link back to it and the date. Twelve lines: legal name and tax number, address, who is selling — the owner or an agent, price, rent, the lease and whether it passes to you, revenue and profit with their period, the papers behind them, staff, licences, and whether you buy the premises or the company itself. Each line shows what the listing says, in the listing’s own currency, or “not stated”. The extension does not guess.
  • What the listing does not say. The lines it leaves blank, on one list at the end of the report: ask the seller about those.
  • The same 12 lines in every report. So you see at once which listing leaves out the rent or the revenue.
  • All your listings in one place. Save each listing with one press, and they sit side by side in one account, My list. Open it on your computer, or sign in on your phone: the same list. No open tabs to keep track of, no bookmarks scattered across sites. Saving needs a sign-in, once on each computer.
  • A check of what a saved listing says and leaves out, part of the free extension. When you save a listing the extension has read, its 12 points are saved with it. Its row in My list has a “Report (PDF)” button: the same report, on your computer or on your phone, with no extension, whenever you need it. A few sites do not allow us to keep copies of their pages; for those, open the listing, and the box on the page gives you the report.
  • Your language, or English. The box and the report open in your browser’s language when the extension has it, and in English when it does not.

When a business is worth a deposit, the report, the panel that opens beside the listing, and each listing on sale in My list open our €550 check with the listing already filled in.

See everything the extension does →

On a phone? The extension works in Chrome or Edge on a computer. Send this page to yourself and open it there.

Email me the link

No sign-up for the report on a page you open: it is built in your browser, and nothing is sent to make it. Keeping it in My list takes an account. Remove the extension any time.

Part of the PDF report on a restaurant listing in Canada: price 295,000 CAD; rent, lease, revenue, profit, the papers behind the figures, staff and licences not stated; for sale: the premises and the equipment
A saved copy of a real restaurant listing in Canada, and the PDF report the free extension made from it. Not a mock-up.

This is what the report looks like. A real page from the sample.

A restaurant in France, checked from the public records and from the seller's documents. Names and amounts are changed; sources, dates and method are real and can be checked.

Sample €550 report page: what the listing states against what the public records show

A page from the €550 report: what the listing says against what the public records show. The listing says the business is being sold for the first time; the records show it was already sold in 2019 for €92,000. All from public records, no seller's papers.

Open the full sample report

Your report comes in your language: any of 181, chosen on the order form.

Sample €950 report page: the table of claim, document and discrepancy

The €950 check. Found: a €52,600 gap in revenue, €20,280 in lease payments still owed by the company you are buying, and about €4,200 in statutory severance if the long-serving employee is later let go. Every number is a bargaining point.

Open the full sample report

Your report comes in your language: any of 181, chosen on the order form.

“The worst mistake of my life. Don't think twice, think twenty times.” A bar buyer, r/askspain, “Buying/transferring a bar in Spain”. In full on the page “What the listing does not say”.

A small-town street with shops on the ground floor

Two ways in

Look for yourself, or hand it to us

The extension

The panel opens beside the listing you are already reading. Its report shows what the listing leaves out and lists what to ask the seller.

See the free extension

The order desk

You send the details through a short form. After that everything lives in your account: you add papers, pay and collect the report there.

See what your account holds

Start my check

Five answers that decide it

The €550 report has eighteen sections. Five of them decide everything else, and all five we find without a single paper from the seller.

  1. 1What is actually being sold. The company itself, or only the business. The report names which, and what comes to you with it: staff, the seller's taxes, the lease, licences.
  2. 2Whether you are allowed to own it. In some places the right to trade is attached to a person with a diploma, not to the premises: a pharmacy to the pharmacist, a clinic to the doctor. A deal like that breaks before your first euro of revenue.
  3. 3What transfers to you by law. Some of the seller's debts can still follow the business: what the staff are owed and, in some countries, part of the seller's taxes. How long the staff have worked carries over too, and a contract with the seller does not cancel what they are owed. We name what protects you in that country and the date by which to act.
  4. 4Whether you keep the premises. What the law of the country says about transferring a lease and raising the rent. The lease itself we read in the €950 report, from the seller's papers.
  5. 5How many months you cannot trade at full strength. While the paperwork changes hands, part of the business stands still. Those months belong in the price.

The other eleven sections give completeness and defend the report in an argument. You will decide on these five.

Any trade, any country where the records can be reached

A workshop, a courier, a salon, a corner shop. Premises or no premises — the records exist for all of them.

A courier scooter beside a closed shutter
DeliveryNo premises, no shop window. There is still plenty to check.
Hands at a sewing machine
TailoringMachines are often not bought but rented long term: when the owner changes, they go back.
Hands wrapping a parcel in paper
Packing and shippingStock is sometimes someone else's. We ask whose.
Scissors and flowers on a table
FlowersA licence can hang on a person, not on the address.
A hairdressing floor with mirrors
SalonStaff seniority transfers to you along with the business.
A row of houses with shops on the ground floor
The streetThe neighbours have their own price. We say how yours compares.

My list: a free shortlist

Save the businesses you are weighing in one place, and come back to them when you are ready.

One list, every site
Businesses you found on different sites sit side by side in one account. No bookmarks scattered across sites.
On your phone too
Sign in on your phone, and the same list is there. One click reopens the listing.
Ready to check one?
From any saved listing, the order form opens already filled in. You review it and send it.
See what My list gives you