How Much Does a Quality of Earnings Report Cost in 2026?

An independent Quality of Earnings report became a condition of SBA 7(a) financing on October 1 for acquisitions priced at $3 million or more, which moved the report from something buyers argued about to a line in the deal budget. The first question most of them ask is what it costs, and the published answers run from under $3,000 to $40,000, a range wide enough to be useless without context.

Providers that specialize in small-business deals and publish their fees cluster between roughly $7,500 and $10,000 for a broad-scope buy-side report on a single-entity business under $10 million, with a databook and a written report included. Lighter products that cover one year of annual figures with a short writeup list between $2,500 and $6,500. Boutiques at the premium end publish $11,000 to $30,000 and higher for a comparable scope with a longer report and more advisory time. National firms and large regional practices start above that and reach six figures on multi-entity or cross-border work. A buyer comparing two quotes that differ by $20,000 is usually comparing two different products.

What the fee buys

A Quality of Earnings fee buys a package of accounting work with a layer of judgment on top of it. The accounting work runs on process: pulling the trial balance and general ledger, rebuilding the income statement month by month, tracing reported revenue to deposits in the bank statements, reconciling the books to the filed tax returns, and testing every add-back the seller has proposed against the documents behind it. The judgment is harder to reduce to a checklist. Someone has to square the seller's account of the business with what the ledger shows, decide which adjustments hold up, and tell the buyer plainly what the numbers support. The output is a databook holding the schedules and the support, and a written report that states normalized earnings, working capital, and anything that behaves like debt.

Fees separate on how each firm delivers that package. A larger practice runs the accounting work through staff associates under partner review, bills more hours at a lower average rate, and delivers a longer document. A boutique puts fewer, more experienced people on the file and bills fewer hours at a higher rate. Within a single firm, much of the gap between the entry tier and the top tier buys a longer report, extra review rounds, and advisory hours rather than deeper testing of the numbers. A firm with repeatable workflows for the data pull and the reconciliations spends less of the fee on mechanics and more of it on the judgment. The finished analysis often lands in the same place, which is why the price spread is so much wider than the quality spread.

Purchase price is a weak predictor

Several providers publish fees in purchase-price bands, and a lender-facing report on a $7.5 million deal can list at roughly double the fee for a $3 million deal from the same firm. Purchase price is a rough proxy for complexity and for how much rides on the number. The hours themselves depend on the condition of the records. A single-entity business running one accounting system, with monthly financials that tie to the bank statements and the tax returns, takes a fairly predictable amount of time to test whether it sells for $1.8 million or $6 million. The same business with three legal entities, intercompany transfers nobody has reconciled in two years, and a bookkeeper who switched from cash to accrual halfway through the period costs considerably more, because the analysis starts by rebuilding records that should already exist.

Four conditions move a quote more than anything else:

• Records and entities. Multiple entities, consolidations, carve-outs, or gaps in the source data.
• Accounting complexity. Work in process, retainage, deferred revenue, material inventory, or a cash-to-accrual reconstruction.
• Analytical depth. Customer cohorts, churn, and contract-level margin go beyond the concentration and trend review that sits in a standard scope.
• Readers and process. Extra diligence calls, a lender vendor review, a refresh of the numbers when the deal slips, and a compressed deadline each add hours.

A quote given before the provider has seen any financials rests on assumptions about the file, and those assumptions are what move the number. One year of trial balance, bank statements, and a tax return is usually enough for an experienced reviewer to tell whether they hold.

The SBA's $3 million line

SOP 50 10 8.1 requires lenders to obtain an independent Quality of Earnings on 7(a) initial acquisitions and business expansions when the business purchase price reaches $3 million. The threshold is measured before the buyer's equity injection and any seller note, and owner-occupied real estate carried at appraised value comes out of the calculation. Owner buyouts are generally exempt. Our earlier piece on the SBA's Quality of Earnings requirement covers the scope the report has to meet.

The rule creates a cost trap for buyers who commission their own analysis early. A lender cannot rely on a report prepared for another party unless one of its approved vendors reviews it, and that review carries its own fee. The SOP's scope is specific: a two-sided cash proof covering receipts and disbursements for the trailing twelve months and each of the last two fiscal years, reconciliation of the financial statements to the tax returns and IRS transcripts, documented adjustments, and an assessment of whether revenue will continue. Many lower-priced buyer products test deposits against revenue and stop there. If the buyer's report was built to that lighter scope, the vendor's answer is often a second engagement rather than a review, and the buyer has paid twice for one set of numbers. Confirming the lender's vendor list and scope expectations before engaging anyone costs nothing and avoids most of that risk.

Providers that have built a lender-use package price it above their buyer product. Published starting fees run from under $10,000 to $12,500 on a clean single-entity file and climb with deal size, since the three-period cash proof and the credit-memo support add hours.

Below $3 million the report stays discretionary, though many lenders ask for one anyway under their own credit policies. Buyers below the line are weighing a real tradeoff, since a fee near $10,000 on a $2 million purchase comes out of the same cash the buyer is bringing to closing.

Where a quote grows after you sign

Most small-business specialists publish a flat fee, and the flat fee usually comes with eligibility conditions: one entity, one ledger, complete monthly data, a set number of bank accounts. The quote grows when the file falls outside them, and diligence is the kind of work where it often does. Seller data that arrives in four installments over three weeks means the analyst restarts the same schedules four times. An entity nobody mentioned at kickoff turns one reconciliation into three. A deal that slips a quarter requires rolling the analysis forward to newer months, which most providers bill as additional work.

Speed costs money too. Published turnarounds run two to three weeks on a complete data set, and compressing that to a week means staffing the file out of sequence, which firms price accordingly. Buyers who start the conversation about diligence before signing the letter of intent, while there is still room to set the exclusivity window, generally pay less than buyers who order the report with three weeks left on the clock.

What to settle before the engagement letter

Ask what the base fee covers in periods, entities, and accounts, since that definition is where most overruns begin. Ask how additional scope gets priced and approved, and what a monthly roll-forward costs. Ask who is permitted to rely on the report, because a lender, an equity partner, or a co-investor who was never named in the engagement letter may not be able to use it. Ask how many calls with the seller and the accountant are included. And ask who will do the work, since the judgment calls on add-backs are where experience earns its rate.

A fixed fee settles most of those questions in advance when it is set after the provider has looked at the file. A published starting price is a floor until someone has reviewed the records, and the quote that follows the review is the number to compare. It also puts the estimation risk where the expertise sits. The tradeoff is that the scoping conversation happens earlier and in more detail, which requires the buyer to hand over financials before anyone has been paid.