Due diligence checklist for buying a business
- Asking price as % of collections
- 75
- Price per active patient
- $416.67
- Collections per active patient a year
- $555.56
The only constants in these sheets are the two payment tables: the monthly payment per $1,000 borrowed over 10 years and over 5 years, at half-point rates between 3% and 15%, computed from the standard amortisation formula. Every other number is worked from the figures you enter: the price, the shares, the rates, the earnings, the documents and the days, with the arithmetic printed beside each answer. The 10 year term is the longest an SBA 7(a) note runs for a purchase without real estate; the defaults are one buyer's worked example, not a price guide and not a lender's offer.
A due diligence checklist for buying a business is a list of documents until the day it becomes a schedule, and the difference is dates. The seller agrees to produce the tax returns, the bank statements, the lease, the customer list and the staff contracts, and produces the easy ones in week one and the hard ones when pressed. The buyer who keeps only a list discovers what is missing in the week before closing; the buyer who keeps a schedule knows on day twenty that eight items are outstanding and forty days remain. This guide is that schedule: what belongs on the list for an ordinary small business, what each item is for, and how the free checklist sheet on this site counts the chase against the closing date. Every figure here is the worked example's arithmetic from the figures you enter.
Open the Buying a dental practice checklist Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Write the list before the letter of intent is signed
Three years of federal tax returns, profit and loss statements and balance sheets, twelve months of bank statements, sales by month and by customer, the lease and its assignment clause, supplier contracts, staff names, pay and tenure, the equipment list with ages, licences and permits, insurance and any claims, and pending disputes. On the worked example that is 24 items.
Date every request and every arrival
Sixteen of 24 received on day 20 of a 60 day period is 67% complete with 8 outstanding and 40 days left, so roughly one document a week keeps the closing date. The sheet returns those figures; the register in Pro keeps the requested and received date against each item so the chase is a filter rather than a search of the inbox.
Read the figures the documents prove against the price
The tax returns rebuild the seller's discretionary earnings, the bank statements confirm the sales, and the lease decides whether the business can stay where it is. $180,000 of earnings and a $450,000 price feed straight into the acquisition cost calculator on this site, which is where the checklist and the funding stack meet.
What buyers ask before they trust the Due diligence checklist for buying a business
How many items should the checklist have? As many as it takes to prove the earnings, the sales, the premises, the people and the liabilities. Twenty-four is an ordinary small business; a practice or a restaurant with licences and equipment often runs longer. The sheet takes your own count.
What if the seller will not produce a document? Then the price or the terms should move, or the buyer should. A missing document is information: bank statements that never arrive are the reason bank statements are on the list. The register records the refusal with its date so the conversation with your attorney starts from the file.
Is the checklist sheet a legal review? No. It counts what has been asked for and received against the days left and returns the price ratios from the seller's figures. Reading the lease, the contracts and the returns is your attorney's and your accountant's work, and this site does not do it.
Will Keysvo carry your purchase? Ask about the Due diligence checklist for buying a business
Tell us what you are buying, how far along the purchase is and what you are keeping the deal in today, and we will say plainly whether Keysvo carries it.