Virtual CFO
Exit readiness
A buyer's diligence team will find the same issues in your Canadian business's books whether you looked first or not, and the only real choice is when: eighteen months ahead on your own timeline as a cleanup project, or mid negotiation as leverage against your price.
13-week cash forecast
Illustrative client · August 2026
CAD
- Cash today
- $244,220
- Lowest week ahead
- 239,800
- Largest outflow
- Payroll, 46,300
Illustrative. An example of the document, not a client's figures.
Same scrutiny, different timing
Every buyer's diligence team runs roughly the same checklist. The one variable within your control is when the issues on that checklist surface, before you go to market on your own schedule, or during a live deal on the buyer's schedule, where every finding becomes a reason to renegotiate.
The checklist we run early
Owner compensation set above or below market rate, related party arrangements such as a lease with a property the owner controls personally, one off items blended into normal operations, and customer or supplier concentration a buyer's team will flag immediately. None of this is unusual to find; the problem is finding it for the first time during a deal.
Multi year, not one snapshot
A single strong year does not satisfy a buyer looking at trend. We build the multi year view a buyer's team will build anyway, including the working capital pattern that will eventually set the closing peg, so nothing in that trend surprises you when someone else calculates it first.
What you get at the end
A ranked list, not a generic checklist: which items genuinely move a buyer's number and are worth fixing before you list, and which are minor enough to leave alone. Twelve to twenty four months ahead gives the most room to fix a multi year pattern; even a shorter runway still surfaces the highest value fixes. This is the same review used in M&A due diligence support, just run before a deal exists rather than during one, and it does not replace an investment bank or M&A advisor running the actual sale.
Questions
Frequently asked questions: Exit readiness
Is there a real benefit to starting this early versus waiting until a buyer is interested?
Yes, meaningfully. An issue found and fixed on your own schedule is a cleanup project. The identical issue found by a buyer mid negotiation becomes a reason to discount the price or slow the deal down.
What single issue comes up most often in this kind of review?
Undocumented owner related add backs. They are common, usually legitimate, and almost always slow diligence down simply because they were not sourced properly the first time.
Does this replace hiring an M&A advisor or investment bank?
No. We prepare the financial side of the business to withstand scrutiny. A banker or advisor runs buyer outreach, negotiation and the sale process itself.
Will this increase our sale price?
No single review can promise a specific outcome, since price also depends on market conditions and buyer interest. What clean, well sourced financials reliably do is remove diligence risk as a reason to discount.
What exactly is included in exit readiness?
A pre-diligence review of your books against a standard buyer request list, and normalized EBITDA and add-back schedule prepared in advance. This work runs inside Excel or Google Sheets, whichever your business already has in place, and it rolls into your regular monthly close rather than sitting off to the side as a separate, unreconciled process.
How far ahead of a sale should we start exit readiness work?
Twelve to twenty-four months gives enough time to clean up trends a buyer will look at, though a shorter runway is still worth the review.
Does this replace hiring an investment bank or M&A advisor?
No. We prepare the financial side of the business; a banker or advisor runs the sale process and the buyer conversations.
What is the single most common issue you find?
Owner-related add-backs and one-off items that are not clearly documented, which slows down diligence and invites buyers to question every adjustment.
How do we get started with exit readiness?
Getting started with exit readiness begins with a short review of your current records and software access. Once that is done we confirm scope and timing in writing, and ongoing work begins on the schedule agreed with you.
Related services
- Virtual CFOM&A due diligence supportFinancial due diligence support for a buy-side or sell-side deal: clean data, a quality-of-earnings view, and answers ready before the buyer or their advisor asks.
- Virtual CFOKPI designA short list of the numbers that actually run your business, defined once and tracked consistently, instead of a dashboard nobody opens.
- Virtual CFOPricing and unit economicsA clear read on what each customer, order or unit actually costs and earns, so pricing decisions are based on margin rather than a guess.
Industries
Next step
Talk to the team that would run your books
A short call covers your setup, your software and what a first month would look like. You get a written scope and price after it.