Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook, I’m Jen Lemanski and I’m back again with Kimberly Wood, a senior manager on our transaction advisory services team. Kimberly, welcome back to the Playbook.

Kimberly: Thanks for having me.

Jen: So, Kimberly we’ve talked a little bit about due diligence, and you’ve mentioned getting your financial house in order. How does a business owner actually do that?

Kimberly: Yeah, so they want to be prepared both financially and operationally. Financially is getting their books in order, you know, you can engage a CPA firm to get an audit or review, or you just want to make sure your records are organized and maintained. So, if you get to the due diligence process and you have all your vendor records, customer contracts, everything’s scattered and out of place and that’s only going to cause bottlenecks, hiccups, and raise more questions. You also want to have a good CFO or controller to be maintaining your books, understanding your financials, to be able to talk about them, telling the story. And then operationally, you want to have your processes in place. You want to have your tax returns filed, your organization documents updated and maintained.

Jen: So, why would doing this, I mean, it sounds like it should be important, but why is it important?

Kimberly: Yeah, it’s important because you want to be able to sell your business for a premium and you want to be able to show the potential buyer, the potential for growth for your business.

Jen: Perfect. Well, we’ll get you back to talk a little bit more about other transaction related topics. Sound good?

Kimberly: Sounds good.

Jen: This has been another thought leadership production brought to you by PKF Texas – The Entrepreneurs Playbook. For more information about this topic, visit www.pkftexas.com. Tune in next week for another chapter.