What should I ask a business seller for first?

Begin with a concise request covering what is being sold, how the operation earns money, the owner's work and the commitments a buyer would need to understand. Ask for matched-period financial summaries and suitable aggregate information. Expand the request when an answer reveals a specific gap.

This is an initial screen, before a full transaction review. A useful response can justify that next stage without proving earnings quality, customer continuity or a safe purchase.

Make the first request answerable

Consider a fictional buyer inquiring about a small commercial sign-installation service. The buyer has not offered a price or requested access to any accounts. A first request could group the questions like this:

1. Activity and sale scope: what services are performed, where, and what assets or ownership interest are being offered? What is expressly excluded?
2. Financial picture: available income-statement and balance-sheet summaries for the last complete year and a clearly dated current period, identifying the accounting basis and business covered. Ask how the figures were prepared.
3. Owner work: responsibilities, typical hours and work performed by employees or outside providers.
4. Dependencies: anonymized customer concentration, recurring work arrangements and material ongoing commitments such as premises or equipment payments.
5. Reason and timing: why the owner wants to sell, the proposed timetable and the transition help being contemplated.

Ask what can appropriately be shared at this stage and what needs a confidentiality arrangement or later controlled review. Customer names, personal records and passwords are unnecessary for this first screen. The seller has not agreed to disclose a record merely because the buyer requests it.

The SBA's acquisition guidance identifies investigation of operating arrangements and financial and transaction records. This staged request is an original editorial approach, rather than a mandatory disclosure list.

Read the pack for coverage

The fictional seller sends a service description, an equipment list, a 2025 income summary and two March 2026 summaries. One labels $42,000 as revenue earned in March on an accrual basis. The other lists $47,000 of credits to a named business bank account during March. The seller describes $4,000 of those credits as an owner transfer, without supplying the supporting entry.

The pack says the owner works 25 hours weekly but supplies no task breakdown. It says several customers return, without an aggregate sales breakdown or their continuing arrangements. Those statements identify follow-up questions; they are not yet verified answers.

A first-pass evidence-gap tracker

Scroll across to read the follow-up column. Use the arrow keys when the table area is focused.

Write one precise follow-up

The $47,000 of bank credits does not substantiate $42,000 of revenue. Even if the $4,000 owner transfer is confirmed, $43,000 remains in other credits: $1,000 more than the stated revenue. That difference has not been explained. It could involve collections from other periods, customer advances or other entries; none is established by these totals.

A bounded request would ask for a redacted March 1–31 revenue register, a March receipt-application summary identifying the invoice periods collected, and support for a small selected set of entries, including the claimed owner transfer. Ask whether the listed account and channels cover all business collections. Use anonymized customer references that can connect the records without exposing names.

If a selected March sale was paid in April, request the relevant later collection support rather than an unrestricted account export. If no reliable mapping exists, record that limitation. A missing attachment is not a finding of fraud, and equal totals would not authenticate the underlying transactions.

The SEC's financial-statement guide distinguishes period earnings from cash movements. The site's revenue and cash explainer and bank-reconciliation guide handle those separate accounting jobs.

Finish with the facts the pack supports, the gaps that matter and the next review worth paying for. Full contract, tax and legal examination belongs to that later, transaction-specific stage.

Records can explain part of an operation while leaving its daily obligations hard to imagine. Read the opening of Infinite Upside for a founder's account of desirable assets becoming customer responsibilities.