Anchor Earnings prepares Quality of Earnings reports and gets businesses ready to pass one. Starting October 1, 2026, every SBA acquisition loan of $3 million or more needs an independent Quality of Earnings report before it closes. Whichever side of the deal you are on, the work starts now.
Free 30-minute call. We will tell you which report you need, what it has to cover, and what to have ready.
SOP 50 10 8.1, Appendix 15: on business purchases of $3 million or more, the lender must commission an independent Quality of Earnings report, with a proof of cash, and use that report's earnings to decide how much it can lend. Buyer and seller reports do not count.
Finance people who have sat on both sides of diligence. We prepare the Quality of Earnings a deal runs on, we get businesses ready to pass one, and we keep owners sale-ready in the years before the call comes.
Buy-side, sell-side, or lender-side for SBA 7(a) loans. Normalized EBITDA with every adjustment documented, proof of cash to the bank statements and tax returns, revenue quality, customer concentration, and the working capital trend. Delivered as a report your credit team or your deal team can act on.
For owners with a deal in sight. We rebuild the add-back schedule with its evidence file, tie revenue to deposits month by month, reconcile the books to the returns, and stage the data room. So what the lender's team finds is what you already knew and could support.
For owners two to ten years out. Assess where you stand through a buyer's eyes, build the clean financials and driver-based forecast a buyer's team wants to see, and maintain it every quarter until you decide it is time.
Search funds, individual acquirers, owner-operators buying their next business, and companies making add-on acquisitions. A buy-side QoE before you commit, with the findings you need to negotiate.
What an independent team finds is up to you. Documentation behind every add-back, every deposit tied to revenue, the books agreeing with the tax returns before anyone else looks. Or start years early and never rush.
SBA 7(a) lenders, banks and non-bank lenders. Engaged by you, prepared for you, with the cash proof and the normalized earnings schedule your DSCR calculation needs. Independent of any business we have prepared.
Who the report is for, what it has to cover, and one data request sized to the business. Bank statements, ledgers, returns, customer revenue and contracts. Clean books answer it in days.
Cash proof to the bank and the returns. Revenue recognition and cut-off. Every add-back against its document. Customer concentration, run-rate, and the working capital trend that sets the peg.
Normalized EBITDA with a documented adjustments schedule, the findings that matter, and a call to walk your credit team or deal team through them. Written so the people sizing the deal can use it directly.
A QoE is not an audit. An audit asks whether the statements are fairly stated. A QoE asks a sharper question: are these earnings real, are they repeatable, and are they worth what is about to be paid for them? The SBA now wants that answer from someone independent of the deal before it lends against those earnings, on any business purchase of $3 million or more.
Not for the loan. Appendix 15 requires a report the lender engages, prepared for the lender. The sell-side report is still worth having, because it tells the seller what an independent team will find, but the bank has to commission its own.
No, and we work alongside whoever is. Your bookkeeper keeps the books and your accountant files the taxes. We explain your numbers, prep you for the QoE, and provide a documented QoE for the transaction. Because we are independent of your business, we can do both.
On a business with clean monthly closes and bank reconciliations, a few weeks. On one where three years of books have to be rebuilt first, longer, and the clock is not the seller's friend. That gap is the whole reason QoE Prep exists.
This is the right time and it is the only real advantage you have. Earnings quality is built out of history, so a buyer or a lender looks at two or three years of numbers. Fix the books three years out and the clean years are the ones on the table.
It depends on the size of the business and the shape its records are in, which is why the first call is free and why every engagement is priced in a written proposal before any work starts. Our fee never depends on whether the deal closes or what it closes at.
Anchor Earnings is the Quality of Earnings and exit-readiness practice of Anchor Partners, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Forty plus years of combined FP&A and controllership experience, from $1M to $7B in revenue. Not a broker, no success fee, and we work alongside your accountant. More about us →
Tell us which seat you are in and where the business stands. We will tell you which report you need, what it has to cover, and what to have ready. The first call is free.
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