For Brokers, Advisors, and Lenders

You get paid when the deal closes. Diligence is where closings die.

Vantage does the numbers work before the buyer's diligence team arrives. Tied-out, ledger-sourced financial packages where every figure traces to the row it came from, so the questions that usually kill a process late get answered before it starts. Twenty minutes is enough to know whether this belongs on your next listing.

Book Twenty Minutes How the referral lane works

Your Economics

Three things you already know

Nothing here is news to anyone who has run a process. It is the reason a diligence-and-numbers partner belongs on your bench before you need one.

Fact One

You eat only what closes

A success fee is contingent by design. A deal that dies in month eight pays close to nothing for eight months of work, and the calendar it consumed is gone either way. Everything that raises the probability of a close is worth more to you than it costs.

Fact Two

Diligence is the killing field

The buyer's team goes into the books and finds figures the records cannot support. From there the process stalls while somebody reconstructs the answer, the price moves, or the seller decides they have been ambushed and walks. The finding is rarely fraud. It is usually an add-back nobody documented at the time.

Fact Three

The books gap is structural

Most companies in this position run cash-basis or hybrid books with no monthly close, because the business never needed one to operate well. The back office grew slower than the company. That is a tooling and process gap, and it is nobody's failure, but the buyer's team will price it anyway.

The Work

Evidence assembled before it is demanded

Two ways in, depending on which side of your book the deal sits on. Both run on the same agentic AI system with a deterministic engine underneath, and both produce the same artifact, a package where every figure carries the source row that produced it. Lenders underwriting an acquisition read the same package the buyer does.

Your Listings

Pre-Diligence Packaging

Run before the listing goes to market, or the moment a letter of intent puts a clock on it. The seller sees the hard questions first and answers them on their own schedule, with the documentation attached while the records are still fresh.

Add-back positions documented with evidence, one row each
Proof of cash reconciled against bank activity, when bank statements are supplied
The questions a buy-side team typically asks, answered in advance
Investor-grade package ready before the data room opens

Buy-Side Mandates

Quality of Earnings Support

For the buyer on the other end, for a lender underwriting the financing, or for your own buy-side mandates. Normalized EBITDA where every adjustment carries its basis and its source, red flags with the evidence attached, and a diligence question set sized against what the analysis actually found.

EBITDA and add-backs tied line by line to the GL
Red flag analysis with source evidence attached
Judgment items handed over identified rather than sized
A deterministic engine, so a rerun on corrected data returns the same package, updated

The Exhibit

What a re-trade is made of

One add-back, two versions. The item is the same in both columns and so is the seller. The only difference is whether the evidence was assembled before the buyer's team asked for it or after.

How it usually arrives

An owner vehicle and travel add-back appears as one line on a summary schedule
The supporting detail sits in an inbox, a card statement, and somebody's memory
The buyer's analyst asks which accounts it came from and over which months
Reconstruction stalls the process, and the seller is now defending rather than selling
The buyer discounts what cannot be shown quickly, and the number moves

How it arrives from Vantage

The same add-back sits on its own register row
The row names the source account, the months, and the rule that identified it
The basis is written in words, so a reviewer reads it rather than asking for it
The buyer's analyst can accept or reject the line without unpicking the schedule
The conversation is about the merits of the item rather than about the delay

Illustration only. No client engagement, deal, or company is depicted, and Vantage makes no claim about how any particular process would resolve.

A number that cannot be shown quickly gets discounted, and the discount lands on your fee. Evidence assembled early is the cheapest insurance in the process.

The Partnership

How this works between us

Plain terms, in writing, and a lane built to run in both directions. Vantage is the numbers seat on your bench and has no interest in the deal itself.

A referral agreement, papered

Send a client and there is a standing referral agreement that pays you a share of collected fees on the engagement, stated in writing before anything moves. The same structure you already work in, which is a percentage of a transaction you helped cause.

A lane designed to run both ways

The sell-side readiness work is designed to meet founders years before they pick an intermediary. As those relationships develop, the introductions are meant to flow to the brokers who send deals here, because a one-way ask is a vendor relationship and this is meant to be the other kind. That is the design of the lane, stated plainly rather than claimed as a track record.

Your client stays your client

Vantage does the numbers work and nothing else. No listing, no buyer introductions, no advice on price or structure, and no opinion on whether to do the deal. The relationship, the process, and the fee are yours, and every engagement is scoped in writing so that stays true.

Never a knock on the seller

The books gap is framed to the client as a tooling problem, because that is what it is. Nobody hears that their bookkeeper failed or that their broker should have caught it. The seller has to stay in the process, and a seller who feels judged does not.