€950. The seller's own numbers,
tested against their own documents.
Delivered in 3–5 working days: the full €550 Screen layer, re-confirmed, plus Block 2 — the earnings reconstructed from filed accounts, bank statements and till data, the cash-consistency review, the stress test and a negotiation plan with a walk-away line. I never contact the seller: you obtain the documents, I test them.
€950 · final price, no VAT added
No documents — no Reality Check.
This tier activates only when the seller's document set is in hand: filed accounts or tax declarations (2–3 years) · business bank statements (12–24 months) · the lease (if premises matter) · licences (if regulated) · till/POS export (if cash business) · staff list with start dates. Earnings are reconstructed from documents only — never invented from assumptions (where a plausibility pressure-test uses stated assumptions, they are printed in the memo). Without the set, the order is delivered as a €550 Screen plus a bilingual Document Request Pack telling you exactly what to demand — and upgrades to a Reality Check for the €400 difference within 30 days once the set is complete. Staff and payroll data must arrive redacted: roles, start dates and salaries — no names, no personal IDs, no addresses.
Everything in the Screen — plus Block 2, named.
The full public-record Screen layer, re-confirmed — verdict, numbered findings, competition module, demand checklist, blind-spot box, evidence annex with retrieval dates.
The document map — what was received → what it evidences → what's still missing and in what priority. Your evidence base, listed and locked at the confirmation.
The earnings reconstruction (SDE method) — 4–8 named adjustment lines depending on data quality, each sourced to a document page: declared result, owner-salary normalisation, one-off items, personal costs on the books, rent-to-contract, under-market wages.
Cash-consistency review — 2–4 checks by data availability: tax-declared vs claimed · bank inflows vs declared takings · physical capacity vs claimed revenue. Where a cash business shows two conflicting sets of numbers, that is named as an unresolved inconsistency — with no allegation of intent: the documents must resolve it, or the price must absorb it.
Two arithmetic checks the figures have to survive — the bank statements must tie month to month (opening + money in − money out = closing, and each month's close is the next month's open); and the card sales rung up on the till must arrive on the bank as card settlements, net of fees. A month that doesn't balance, or till takings that never reach the account, is a stop — not something averaged over. Where a check cannot be completed on the documents supplied, that part is withheld rather than estimated.
The stress test — rent renewal, key person leaving, licence re-grant — each with its impact in €.
The payback screen — how many years of documented cash flow it takes to get your money back. Arithmetic on their documents and your constraints — not a valuation, and it must not be used as one.
The negotiation plan — 3–5 levers in the order I'd raise them at the table, plus a walk-away line.
The verdict, re-issued on the fuller evidence — documents can move it either way, and the memo says which way and why.
The authenticity boundary, stated — documents are cross-checked for internal consistency (till × bank × quarterly filings), not authenticated with issuers; curated or forged papers are a named blind spot, mitigated by triangulation, never eliminated.
What the Reality Check is a hybrid of.
Buy-side quality-of-earnings practice — the owner-benefit recast (seller's discretionary earnings), scaled from M&A due-diligence work down to small-business deals, with every adjustment sourced to a document page.
Forensic cash-consistency techniques — three-way triangulation: what the tax filings say × what the bank saw × what the till recorded. Forging one is easy; forging all three in sync is tax fraud in writing.
Stress testing from credit analysis — the downside scenarios a lender would run: rent renewal, key person leaving, licence re-grant — each priced in €.
Negotiation-preparation frameworks — every gap ordered into a lever, with a walk-away line; ammunition for your table, not advice about your decision.
Sources: the seller's own documents (obtained by you — I never contact the seller), the full public-record stack of the Screen layer, and practitioner literature on quality-of-earnings review. The working checklists and adjustment rules stay internal — sources are open, the method's edge is the synthesis.
The structure specimen — honestly redacted.
A Reality Check is built only from real documents, so its sample can't show invented numbers: the specimen shows every section with the figures deliberately redacted — the structure is real, the machinery is printed, nothing is a fantasy.
Tick what you hold — the scale shows
how firmly this check can stand.
The scale is Verification Depth for this tier: how firmly the check's conclusions can rest on evidence — driven entirely by what you provide. It never measures the quality of the deal or promises findings: the check delivers its full stated format at any depth.
Verification Depth — Reality Check
The honest edges of €950.
Not a certified valuation and not an audit — I'm not a valuer, and this is a common-sense test on non-audited seller numbers. No on-site inspection, no forensic accounting, no legal opinion, no negotiation on your behalf, no guarantee that the seller's documents are true (the triangulation names the risk, it doesn't erase it). The same structural blind spots as every tier remain, named in the memo. One evidence base per order: the document set locks at the evidence-base confirmation — late arrivals support a re-issue or a fresh order, never the running engagement.
Holding the seller's documents?
Secure intake · deal ID on the spot · no payment until I confirm it's a fit · every memo personally signed · commercial opinion, not legal advice.