SAMPLE ASSESSMENT — modeled company, not a client
Blue Collar Systems 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.

Blue Collar Systems

Home Services / Trades  ·  Assessment vs Validation  ·  every company here is fictional
Full Assessment report →Full Validation report →See the summary comparison →All samples →
Assessment · questionnaireNo overall score — self-reported44/44 answered · 0 documents · 13 capped at 6
Validation · documents4.5/10 verified7 documents ingested · 8-domain blend

Where the answers and the notes diverge 1

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“Normal owner stuff, my truck and my phone and some tools, maybe thirty-five or forty thousand. The truck and fuel are the business, I run the whole route in it. My wife does the books part-time and I pay her through payroll. A few conference trips too. My CPA knows it all, it just is not itemised in a schedule.”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

Both complete reports are below, exactly as published — these frames load the same files the links above open, so nothing here can drift from the reports it shows.

The Assessment report, in full

Scored from the owner’s forty-four answers. No documents reviewed.

The Validation report, in full

Scored from the document set. Findings cite the file they came from.

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 — 7 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.