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Make your own copy. Open the template, then choose File and Make a copy. It opens a fresh, editable copy in your own Google Drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aj3PEGWG4pmrgmLpNrK4jT41s9bTpdGWQbbXL7Jo_gI/copy

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A RocketLevel working tool for restoration owners preparing for an eventual sale, a recapitalization, or simply a tighter-run business, backed by decades of experience in the trade.

Clean these up years before you sell, not after a buyer's forensic accountant finds them. A buyer's Quality of Earnings team reads your books through strict institutional generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), not the tax lens your local accountant optimizes for. Every item below that is messy on the day they look becomes a price haircut, an escrow holdback, or a stalled deal. The same discipline makes the business steadier to run whether or not you ever sell.

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Financials

• [ ] Migrate to GAAP accrual accounting, with running work-in-progress schedules, so revenue is recognized over time on actual cost incurred against total estimated cost, the cost-to-cost input method under Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 606, rather than when a milestone invoice goes out. Older guidance and many accountants still call this percentage-of-completion, and the arithmetic is the same.
• [ ] Produce a clean profit-and-loss statement that ties to your tax returns and bank statements.
• [ ] Separate personal expenses from business expenses; stop running personal costs through the company.
• [ ] Document every add-back with a one-line justification you could defend: one-time legal or settlement costs, owner perks (personal vehicles, travel), above-market owner salary, family on payroll who do not work in the business, and other non-recurring hits.

Revenue quality

• [ ] Map revenue concentration by source: top customer, top carrier, top third-party administrator, each as a percentage of revenue.
• [ ] Flag every source against the same three zones, so the answer is checkable rather than a judgment call. On single-largest-source share, counted at the parent company: at or under 10 percent is healthy, above 10 percent and up to 25 percent is caution, and above 25 percent is danger. Boundaries resolve one way only. Exactly 10 percent is healthy, because caution starts above 10. Exactly 25 percent is caution, because danger starts above 25. Every share from 0 to 100 lands in exactly one zone. These lines are RocketLevel working thresholds, not a published standard, and they are set in The Concentration Risk Playbook, which is the library standard and governs if any page ever reads differently.
• [ ] Run the separate stability test on the same sources, because size and volatility are two different risks. For each source, ask how many points of total revenue one realistic decision by that source could move (a rate cut, a routing change, a program ending). Circle anything above 5 points. Above 10 is not up for debate (RocketLevel working test). Explain anything you circled to a buyer before they find it. Keep this test away from the zones. It answers how much a source moves, not how big it is, and a source at 12 percent and a source at 60 percent can both fail it while being nothing alike. A source can also sit safely under 25 percent and still alarm a buyer if one decision on its side could move several points of your revenue.
• [ ] Identify change-of-control and assignability clauses in your program and commercial contracts; know which agreements transfer with the company and which need prior written consent.
• [ ] Document collectibility evidence for aged accounts receivable (AR): recoverable depreciation, dual-endorsement (mortgage) checks, and any other reason a 90-plus-day balance is real money, not bad debt.
• [ ] Before you age any commercial receivable further, check whether its mechanics lien deadline is still open. This one is not recoverable if you get it wrong. Lien deadlines run from a triggering event such as last furnishing of labor or materials, or completion, and they vary by state, by whether you contracted directly with the owner or came in as a sub, and sometimes by property type. Your state may also require a preliminary or pre-lien notice early in the job, and failing to send it forfeits the lien even if you file on time. Miss the deadline and the lien right is extinguished permanently. No filing later revives it, and you are left as an unsecured creditor chasing the balance. Calendar every job to the deadline rather than deciding case by case. A buyer's diligence team will test aged commercial AR against exactly this, and a receivable whose lien window has closed gets written toward zero in their model.

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A mechanics lien deadline that passes while you are still aging the receivable kills the lien for good. The deadline, and any preliminary notice the lien depends on, are set by each state's lien statute and turn on your tier and the triggering event, so get the calendar in writing for every state you work in. This is not legal advice. Spend an hour with a construction lawyer in your state before the lien window closes. It costs a lot less than the fight afterward.

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Operations

• [ ] Reduce owner dependency: move key customer relationships and estimating off the owner's personal phone and onto the brand and the team.