$4.15M in revenue, profitable. Looks good on the cover. Scroll, and I'll take you through it the way I would at the table, one piece at a time.

That is the whole game. Everything we look at is really asking that one thing. Start with the easy part.

Fair value for a shop like this runs $4.48M to $6.11M. The price on the table was $3.75M, a full $734K under the floor. On money alone this is a good buy. So why isn't it a slam dunk?

The discount is real, but the price can't tell you why it is there. It can't see which customer really carries the book, or the check the growth actually costs. Find the reason before you fall for it.

Top three customers are 43% of the book. The CIM says 73. The rows add up to 83. Concentration is worse than they told you. First thing to verify.

The owners do the quoting themselves, 40+ years of instinct for what a job costs and whether to take it. And they're selling to retire. That knowledge is what you're actually buying, and right now it's a blank.

The same business is a safe buy for someone who has lived this trade and a dangerous one for a stranger. Before you price the deal, size the gap between what they know and what you know.

Every number the CIM stated, checked against the primary record. Where they split, the record governs. These aren't gotchas, they're your questions for the seller.

10 of 12 covenants pass. Coverage is 1.90 times, and it holds to 1.52 even at minus twenty percent, above the bank's 1.25 line.

The shop runs near full. The next customer you win, the growth you are buying this for, needs the next machine, and keeping this fleet current is an ongoing capital line the records do not date. Add the down payment and working capital, and the check you'd actually write is about $1.26M. The bank test is not the buyer test. Total the checks before you fall for the coverage ratio.

The money is a gift. So the deal doesn't turn on price, it turns on three things the price can't see: lock down the customer concentration, total the capital, because this deal can clear the bank and still be too big a check, and get the owner's knowledge transferred before they go.

That last part, who leaves, what walks with them, and how much of it you can actually receive, is the judgment. The one piece the software hands back to you.