The records a buyer asks for first
Three years of returns and statements, and they have to agree with each other. What a buyer checks first, and what to fix before anyone asks.
The first real request from a buyer is dull: three years of tax returns, profit-and-loss statements, and a balance sheet. Owners hand them over and assume the interesting part comes later. It does not. Most of what a buyer decides about your company, he decides from those pages.
They have to agree with each other
Your P&L says one thing. Your tax return says another. Both are probably defensible on their own, and a buyer still stops when they do not line up, because he cannot tell which one is the business.
Usually the gap is ordinary: cash basis against accrual, an owner distribution booked as an expense, equipment expensed in the books and depreciated on the return. None of it is wrong. All of it needs an explanation ready before the question arrives, because an explanation given in week six sounds different from the same explanation given in week one.
Every add-back needs a document behind it
Add-backs are where your real earnings show up, and they are also where a deal loses money quietly. You will add back your own pay above a market wage, the truck, the phone, the family member on payroll who does not work in the business, the one-time legal bill.
The buyer's accountant will ask for the invoice on each one. Anything you cannot show comes back out of the earnings, and it comes out at the same multiple the rest of the business is being priced at. A $14,000 add-back you cannot document is not a $14,000 problem.
Keep a one-page schedule: the item, the amount, the year, and where the proof lives. It takes an afternoon and it is the single most useful document you will build.
A Straight Answer
Pull three years of returns and three years of statements and read them side by side this week. Every place they disagree is a question you will be asked. You want the answer written down before a buyer finds the gap, not after.
None of this makes your company worth more. It makes the number you claim survivable, which is a different thing and usually worth more money.
BuiltEquity is a sell-side brokerage for trades and field-service companies. Nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice. Your CPA and your attorney are the authority on your situation.