Every business sale runs on a set of numbers the buyer did not produce. The seller's accountant prepared them. The broker put them in the IM. The bank will re-add them before it lends.
Most of the time the question nobody asks early enough is simple: do the documents agree with each other?
Not whether the business is good. Not what it is worth. Whether the numbers the seller handed over can all be true at the same time.
Two tests answer a large part of that, and you can run both in a few minutes.
Test one: the tax return against the management accounts
The seller filed a tax return. The seller also gave you management accounts. Both describe the same business over the same year.
Take the net result on each and compare the gap to the revenue. Timing and accounting choices make a small difference normal. A large one means one of the two documents is telling a different story, and you want to know which before you sign anything.
Test two: the cash cycle
If the business bills customers who pay in 60 days, it should be carrying roughly 60 days of those billings as money owed to it at year end. Multiply the billings by the settlement days and you have what the receivables should look like.
Then look at what the balance sheet reports. When the two are far apart, either the billings, the payment terms or the balance sheet is wrong.
Run them free
Both tests run in your browser at apir.ai/check-numbers. You type the figures in. Nothing is uploaded.
They are arithmetic, not judgement. They tell you where to look, not what you will find.
When you need it on the record
If you need the result in a form the other side will accept, there are two paid steps, priced on our rate card.
The Numbers Check, AUD 149, runs the same two tests on the figures you enter, approved by a person and sealed, with a public page anyone can verify.
The Triage Verdict, AUD 2,500 fixed, reads the documents themselves: seven tests, the page reference on every finding, and one of three answers, consistent, inconsistent or insufficient. A person signs it within 48 hours of the last document. It is sealed, so a lender or a buyer checks it online without calling anyone.
What it is not
It is not an audit. It is not a valuation. It is not advice. It will say what does not reconcile. It will not say why, and it will not tell you whether to buy.
That is deliberate. The question a buyer can least afford to get wrong is the plainest one, and it deserves a plain answer.
Run the two tests on the next IM you read. If they come back clean, you have lost a few minutes. If they do not, you have found the conversation to have before the LOI.