SAMPLE ASSESSMENT — modeled company, not a client

Atlas Security Technologies is a modeled business created to demonstrate this assessment. Both sides of this comparison are synthetic: the owner's answers were authored to demonstrate the questionnaire, and the source documents behind the Validation column were generated to a spec. Both are scored by the same engine, against the same criteria used for real engagements — so the method is real and the company is not. Nothing here describes an actual business, and this is not a case study of client work.

Atlas Security Technologies

Commercial Services · Assessment vs Validation · every company here is fictional

Full Assessment report →Full Validation report →See the full side-by-side →All samples →

Assessment · questionnaireNo overall score — self-reported44/44 answered · 0 documents · 12 capped at 6

Validation · documents4.5/10 verified11 documents ingested · 8-domain blend

Where the answers and the notes diverge 2

Every row below is computed from the owner's own submission: the answer they selected, the phrase in their own note that sits against it, and the record that would settle which is right. None of it is written by us, and none of it is an accusation.

fr_02answered 8/10

Owner reportedModest add-backs — owner comp to market, a clear one-time item or two — all documented

…but their own note said“Mostly just my salary normalization and my truck. Some of the vehicle and fuel runs through the business, and my son is on payroll part-time. It's all legitimate.”matched: my truck

Self-reported add-back answer and the owner's description may not align — confirm against an itemised add-back schedule and the filed tax return.

Settled by add_back_schedule, tax_returns_3yr, gl_export

tm_01answered 8/10

Owner reportedYes, with one or two things still on a personal login

…but their own note said“Most of it is on company accounts now. The alarm-monitoring portal and the carrier account are still under my personal email — I set them up in 2012 and never moved them over.”matched: my personal email

Self-reported systems-ownership answer and the owner's description may not align — confirm credentials are entity-held and transferable.

Settled by systems_access_ownership_inventory, technology_stack_list

The eight domains, both ways

The Assessment column is what the owner reported and how urgently it reads for them. The Validation column is what the documents support. Where Validation is blank, the evidence did not reach the threshold to score it.

Domain	Reported	Owner’s priority	Verified
Diligence Risk	5.4	High	4.1/10
Owner Risk	4.0	High	3.0/10
Customer Quality	6.5	Moderate	6.2/10
Operational Scalability	6.2	Moderate	4.0/10
Financial Readiness	7.8	Moderate	5.7/10
Legal & Regulatory Compliance	7.2	Moderate	5.2/10
Technology & Systems Maturity	6.2	Moderate	3.8/10
Human Capital	5.2	High	4.3/10

What moves you from one to the other

The Assessment names what to work on from what the owner reported. Validation substantiates each of those against the documents — 11 of them here — scopes the remediation to what the records actually show, and computes the valuation gap from real EBITDA. That is how 4.5/10 came to be a number worth quoting rather than an assertion.

Severity below is calculated from what you reported, not from what your scores were held to. A criterion answered strongly is treated as strong here even where the score was capped for want of a document — the cap is a statement about evidence, not about your business.

Validation verifies each of these against your documents, scopes the remediation to what your records actually show, and computes your valuation gap from your real EBITDA — the substantiation and the figures a self-reported assessment cannot produce. Engagement pricing comes out of a scoping conversation, once there is a document set to scope against.