QoE (Quality of Earnings)

Definition

An accounting review that verifies the earnings you are paying for.

Why It Matters

It is the single most-skipped and most-regretted diligence spend, because the earnings are the whole basis of the price and the seller's bookkeeping is not neutral. Since October 2026 the SBA requires one on an outright purchase or an expansion priced at $3 million or more, real estate the business occupies left out, and a report the seller commissions does not count. A good one routinely moves the price by more than it costs, catching revenue booked before it was earned, add-backs that will not survive you, and customer concentration a clean P&L hides. What one actually costs is worth reading off the providers themselves: the shelf carries each firm's own current range against the deal sizes it quotes for, which is a narrower answer than any figure repeated here would stay.

In numbers: A single $40,000 add-back that does not survive the review is worth $120,000 of price at a 3x multiple, which is the arithmetic that decides whether the engagement pays for itself.