ARABAThe 48-Hour Deal Screen
Know what you are buying before you sign the LOI.
Fast, fixed-price, decision-grade intelligence on a business you are about to buy, in your hands within 48 hours. Before you commit to an LOI, before you spend £16k on full due diligence. A decision, not a data dump.
Scanned, flagged, and a verdict, in one pass.
The problem
Most searchers look at 100 businesses to buy one.
Full due diligence is too slow and too expensive to run on every maybe. So buyers rush it or skip it. And that is how you inherit someone's hidden debt, a top customer already halfway out the door, or a business that only runs because the seller is still in the building.
The gap
Two options, and neither is built for this moment.
The thin report
At the low end, a cheap vetting report that is not decision-grade. It tells you what the seller already told you.
The full Quality of Earnings
At the high end, 3 to 4 weeks and around £16k. Too slow and too expensive to run on a deal you have not committed to yet.
Nobody owns the fast, fixed-price, decision-grade, pre-LOI screen for UK small-deal buyers. That is the gap this fills.
The dossier
What the dossier delivers in 48 hours.
Built from what a buyer can already see pre-LOI. The teaser, the seller's last accounts, Companies House, and public signals. Here is what it checks.
- Earnings quality. Margin trend, adjusted versus real EBITDA, add-back sanity, and whether the revenue is actually recurring.
- Receivables and cash health. DSO, customer concentration in the cash, bad-debt risk, and whether the profit is real money. This is the receivables competence behind invobi and Get Paid, and a red flag most buyers miss.
- Customer concentration and churn.
- Owner dependency. Does it run without the seller.
- Market and competitive context.
- Public record. Companies House director history, prior insolvencies, CCJs, charges, filing timeliness, reviews, and litigation signals.
- A verdict. Proceed, renegotiate, or walk, with the specific risks to resolve if you go to full DD.
- A score. A defensible 0-100 deal-risk read across all seven dimensions, weighted so the things that actually kill deals count most. A number you can put in front of your lender, not just a paragraph.
The product is the judgement, not the data. Cited throughout.
Why me
The unfair edges.
Speed
48 hours, not 3 to 4 weeks.
A decision, not a report
I name the risks and say walk or proceed.
Financial-health competence
I built a live receivables engine, so cash versus profit is the part I read best.
Built for this
Fixed price, UK-specific, discreet, one operator.
Pricing
Priced like insurance, because it is.
Free
The Deal Red-Flag Scan
The top five red flags on one target, in 48 hours.
£1,500 founding£2,500 standard, per target
The Deal Screen
Full dossier, all risks scored, a lender-ready call.
Around £3,500 a month
Searcher retainer
Up to three screens a month, for when you are weighing several at once.
A bad acquisition costs you £1M and up. This is a couple of thousand pounds of insurance on the decision.
Free scan
Send me a deal you are weighing up.
Send me one business you are seriously considering, the seller's teaser and last accounts, and within 48 hours I send back the five red flags I would want answered before you spend money on full due diligence. If it is clean, I will tell you that too. No cost.
Once you request, reply to my email with the teaser and the last two or three years of accounts and I will get started.
This is intelligence to inform your decision. It is not legal, financial, or accounting due diligence, and it is not a certified Quality of Earnings. Use it to decide whether a deal is worth the cost of full due diligence.