Owner Resources

Use these checklists to identify questions for a management discussion. They are educational starting points, not an assessment of your business or professional legal, tax, or investment advice.

MARGIN LEAKAGE CHECKLIST
1. Customer economics: Can you connect revenue to the labor, materials, freight, discounts, and service exceptions needed to earn it?
2. Pricing discipline: Are discounts, credits, and out-of-scope work visible and approved?
3. Labor productivity: Do you distinguish productive hours, overtime, idle time, rework, and training?
4. Service consistency: Which workflows generate repeat exceptions, missed commitments, or avoidable handoffs?
5. Cash conversion: Are billing delays, disputed invoices, inventory, and collection issues reviewed together?
6. Management visibility: Do Finance and Operations use consistent definitions and review the same measures?

Where to start
Choose one service, workflow, or customer group. Agree a baseline and the data needed to test the suspected issue. Separate a measured finding from an explanation that still needs evidence. Prioritize a controlled test before assuming that a broad cost cut will improve the business.

M&A READINESS CHECKLIST
1. Reporting: Can management reconcile financial reports, explain adjustments, and document key assumptions?
2. Concentration: Are customer, supplier, and key-person dependencies understood?
3. Operating documentation: Are important workflows, responsibilities, and performance measures recorded?
4. Contracts and records: Can the business locate current agreements, ownership records, and relevant obligations for review by its qualified advisers?
5. Management continuity: Can the business operate consistently when an owner or key decision-maker is absent?
6. Information readiness: Is there an organized information request process, appropriate access control, and a clear owner for each data source?

Where to start
Create a readiness gap register: issue, supporting evidence, proposed owner, dependency, and next action. Resolve basic reporting and documentation gaps before a transaction timetable creates pressure. Legal, tax, audit, valuation, and regulated transaction questions require appropriately qualified professionals.

TURN QUESTIONS INTO A DEFINED SCOPE
The Crestline Value Creation Assessment can help organize agreed business information into a findings summary, prioritized opportunity roadmap, and 90-day action plan. Scope, fee, and timetable are agreed in writing.