Short answer: in the lower middle market, a buy-side quality of earnings (QoE) report generally runs $20,000 to $50,000. Published comparisons of national and Big Four transaction advisory practices put their ranges at roughly $50,000 to more than $500,000, depending on deal size. QoEAgent publishes a flat $10,000 for Proof-of-Cash Plus, which covers the reconciliation and financial statement preparation that make up most of the labor in a traditional engagement.
What the market charges
Fees track deal size and record quality more than anything else. Reported buy-side ranges:
| Enterprise value | Typical all-in buy-side fee |
|---|---|
| Under $5 million | $20,000 – $35,000 (usually limited scope) |
| $5 – $15 million | $25,000 – $50,000 |
| $15 – $75 million | $45,000 – $90,000 |
| $75 – $150 million | $80,000 – $150,000 |
| Above $150 million | $150,000 – $400,000+ |
Sell-side work generally runs 10 to 30 percent higher than the equivalent buy-side scope, because the deliverable has to survive scrutiny from several buyers rather than one.
What QoEAgent charges
- Flash Cash Review — rapid cash receipts and disbursements for a pre-LOI gut check. Scoped per engagement.
- Proof-of-Cash Plus — $10,000 flat. Complete proof of cash within 24 hours of data ingestion, plus GAAP-formatted monthly and twelve-month classified income statements and balance sheets including reported EBITDA, a GAAP trailing-twelve-month statement of cash flows, and a reconciling cash flows summary, within 48 hours.
- QoE Essentials — adds a normalized EBITDA schedule, working capital and operating cycle metrics (DSO, DIO, DPO, CCC), customer concentration and change-of-control review. Scoped per engagement.
Why the price is what it is
Most of a QoE fee is not judgment. It is data preparation: pulling bank statements, matching every deposit and withdrawal to the general ledger, mapping a trial balance to a standard chart of accounts, and reading through leases and vendor agreements. That work scales with record quality, not deal size, which is why a $4 million business with scanned statements and a cash-basis ledger can cost nearly as much to diligence as one four times its size.
On a recent trailing-twelve-month engagement, that preparation meant 431 manually scanned bank statements across 36 bank accounts, 29,823 transactions, and a general ledger of 1,365,571 journal entries across 5,196 accounts and 44 sites. Done by hand it is roughly four weeks of analyst time. Automated, the proof of cash came back in 24 hours at a 99.4% average match rate, with one $32 variance left flagged for a human.
The deals that skip it
Below roughly $10 million of enterprise value, the arithmetic stops working. A $30,000 QoE on a $4 million acquisition is a meaningful share of the equity check, so buyers sample instead of verifying, or skip the proof of cash entirely and rely on the seller’s books. Independent sponsors and search funds running add-on acquisitions hit this constantly: every target needs verification, and almost none of them can carry a full-scope fee.
That is the gap a flat, published price is meant to close.
Common questions
Is an automated proof of cash a substitute for a full QoE?
No. A proof of cash verifies that reported activity matches bank activity. A full quality of earnings report adds normalized EBITDA, working capital analysis, customer concentration and change-of-control review. QoEAgent automates the reconciliation and statement preparation underneath both, and flags variances for human review rather than resolving them.
What do you need to start?
Bank statements in standard PDF form and a trial balance export from any accounting system. Setup takes less than a day, and first results land within hours of ingestion. Get in touch for a scope.