# Add-backs

Expenses added back to profit to show what an owner really earned.

Telling the defensible add-backs from the aggressive ones is most of what screening is, because a legitimate one reflects a cost you genuinely will not carry while an inflated one is price dressed up as profit. Every soft dollar you accept gets multiplied, so a $60k phantom add-back at a 3x multiple is $180k of price for earnings that were never there.

In numbers: A $60k marketing spend added back as 'one-time' but recurring every year inflates [SDE](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/sde) by $60k; at a 3x multiple, that is $180k of price for earnings that do not exist.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/add-backs
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt