Our M&A advisor recommended we perform a sell-side Quality of Earnings audit. How do we prepare our finance seat for this intense process without completely halting our weekly operational momentum and quarterly Rock progress?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A sell-side Quality of Earnings audit is a brutal, exhaustive process that can easily overwhelm a clean finance department. If your finance leader is consumed by pulling historical transaction records, your daily operations and cash flow management will suffer.

To survive the audit with your operational momentum intact, you must adjust your Accountability Chart temporarily. Do not expect your head of finance to manage the audit and their daily duties simultaneously. Create a temporary project team to handle the data requests. You may need to bring in an external contract accountant or a specialized consultant to assist with the heavy lifting of data collection.

In your weekly Level 10 Meetings, treat the audit as a critical corporate Rock. Track its progress using a simple, dedicated scorecard metric, such as the percentage of data requests completed. This keeps the audit structured and prevents it from bleeding into every conversation.

By isolating the audit work from your daily financial management, your head of finance can keep their focus on tracking your standard business metrics. This ensures your weekly financial reports remain accurate and your customer invoicing runs on time, keeping the business strong while you prepare for the sale.