$8.20M 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 $4.88M to $6.66M. The price on the table was $6.66M. So why isn't price the whole story?

Full price leaves no room for what can go wrong, so everything that follows has to check out or the price does not hold. It can't see which customer really carries the book, or the jobs in flight, and the cost to complete on the biggest ones. That part we look at ourselves.

Top three customers are 47% of the book. The CIM says 61. The rows add up to 69. Concentration is worse than they told you. First thing to verify.

The CIM flags it: knowledge and relationships concentrate in the owner. Before you price the transfer, get names: which employee holds which customer relationship, who prices the work, who the customers call when something breaks, and whether those people stay. This is where the owner's tacit knowledge lives, and no document will hand it to you.

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.

6 of 12 covenants pass. Coverage is 1.12 times, and it thins to 0.90 at minus twenty percent, under the bank's 1.25 line.

Across 6 open jobs, billings run $202K ahead of the work actually done, against $49K earned but not yet billed the other way. Net, the business is overbilled by $153K: margin booked but not yet earned. Verify the cost-to-complete on the biggest open jobs before you trust the revenue.

The CIM shows one revenue number. But a contractor is two businesses: service agreements that recur, and jobs you have to win. Before the LBO model means anything, demand the split, and the service-agreement list with renewal history. The only breakdown disclosed is a channel mix (General contractors 55%, Building owners direct 45%), not a service-vs-contracting split. You cannot forecast debt service on blended revenue.

The deal turns on four things the price can't see: lock down the customer concentration, verify the cost-to-complete on the open jobs before you trust the booked margin, demand the service-vs-contracting revenue split before you trust the coverage, 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.