SAMPLE ASSESSMENT — modeled company, not a client

Greenscape Landscape Services 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.

Greenscape Landscape Services

Home Services / Trades · Assessment vs Validation · every company here is fictional

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

Validation · documents4.3/10 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.

lc_03answered 8/10

Owner reportedGenerally compliant with minor documentation gaps

…but their own note said“Crews are W-2 through the season. The spring blowout guys and a couple of the mowing routes are all 1099 — that is how everyone around here does it.”matched: all 1099

Self-reported employment-compliance answer and the owner's description may not align — confirm classification and written agreements against the records.

Settled by offer_letters_employment_agreements, i9_eligibility_confirmation, compensation_benefits_summary

ops_04answered 8/10

Owner reportedWithin 30 days, reviewed regularly by management

…but their own note said“Books get squared up at tax time. In season I am on a mower, not in the office.”matched: at tax time

Self-reported reporting-cadence answer and the owner's description may not align — confirm the close cadence against recent reporting packs.

Settled by monthly_close_checklist, three_year_pl

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	2.8/10
Customer Quality	7.0	Moderate	6.0/10
Operational Scalability	5.5	High	3.2/10
Financial Readiness	6.8	Moderate	5.8/10
Legal & Regulatory Compliance	6.6	Moderate	4.8/10
Technology & Systems Maturity	4.6	High	3.7/10
Human Capital	5.0	High	3.2/10

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 4.3/10 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.