7 Reports to Keep Running While Your Business Is Under Contract

Short answer

The reports to keep running while your business is under contract are the same ones the buyer priced you on: a monthly closed profit and loss, revenue by customer, gross margin by month, a rolling cash forecast, backlog or booked work, receivables aging, and a current adjustment schedule. Keep them on the same calendar and in the same format they had before the letter of intent.

Most owners treat the signed letter of intent as the moment the finance work ends. It is the moment it gets watched. The buyer signed based on a set of numbers, and between that signature and closing day they will keep receiving fresh versions of those same numbers to confirm nothing has changed.

The interim period is the stretch between a signed letter of intent and closing, when the buyer keeps watching your monthly results while diligence runs. It is the period where a business quietly slips, because the person who normally watches the numbers is spending sixty hours a week answering diligence requests instead.

The seven reports below are ordered by how quickly a gap in each one becomes visible to a buyer, fastest first. That is deliberate. The reports that expose you soonest are the ones worth protecting first if your finance capacity is stretched.

The seven reports, fastest to expose you first

1. A monthly profit and loss, closed on the same calendar as before

The monthly close is the report a buyer notices first, because they are waiting for it. If your close ran ten business days before the letter of intent and now runs twenty five, the buyer learns two things: the current month is unknown, and your reporting depends on someone who is now busy. Both raise questions you do not want raised during exclusivity. Protect the close calendar above everything else in this list, even if it means the diligence request list waits a day.

2. Revenue by customer, refreshed monthly

Revenue by customer is the report that shows whether the concentration picture the buyer underwrote is still true. A buyer who saw your top ten customers before the letter of intent will ask for the same list again before closing, and they will compare the two side by side. If a meaningful account has gone quiet, you want to be the one who says so, with the reason and what is being done. Finding it yourself is a conversation. Having the buyer find it in a refreshed file is a repricing discussion.

3. Gross margin by month, by line of business

Gross margin by month is where a soft period shows up before revenue does. Revenue can look flat while margin quietly erodes because a job was underbid, a material cost moved, or the mix shifted toward lower margin work. A buyer reading three years of history plus four months of interim results will see the trend line bend even if the top line holds. Keep the margin report at the same level of detail the buyer already has, and write the explanation for any move before you send it.

4. A rolling cash forecast

A rolling cash forecast is the report that keeps the sale from disrupting the business it is selling. Deal costs, delayed decisions, and a distracted owner all pull on cash at the same time, and a business that gets tight during exclusivity makes decisions it would not otherwise make: stretching payables, delaying a hire, deferring maintenance. Each of those shows up somewhere in diligence. A thirteen week forecast, refreshed weekly, is enough to see the squeeze early and manage it deliberately rather than reactively.

5. Backlog, booked work, or pipeline

Backlog is the only report on this list that describes the future rather than the past, which is exactly why buyers ask for it during the interim period. A buyer wants evidence that the business they are closing on still has work ahead of it. Whether you report signed contracts, booked-not-billed, or a weighted pipeline matters less than reporting the same measure the same way every month. A backlog number that changes definition between the letter of intent and closing carries no weight at all.

6. Accounts receivable aging and collections

The receivables aging tells a buyer whether revenue is turning into cash on the same timeline it used to. Days sales outstanding drifting out during exclusivity reads as either a collections process that stopped or a customer that stopped paying, and both are worth explaining before someone asks. Aging also feeds the working capital conversation at closing. What actually counts toward that calculation is set by your purchase agreement, not by a general rule, so ask your advisors which components and which months are in the definition rather than assuming.

7. A current adjustment schedule

The adjustment schedule should not stop at the letter of intent, because earnings keep accruing after it. Owner personal costs, one-time items, and normalizing entries continue to occur in the months between signing and closing, and if they are only documented through the last full year, the interim months arrive at the buyer unadjusted and look worse than they are. Keep coding adjustments as they happen, with the same support standard you used for the historical schedule. Reconstructing four months of it at the end is the version that gets discounted.

The unchanged format rule

Freeze the format of every recurring report on the day the letter of intent is signed, and change nothing but the numbers.

This sounds small. It is not. A report that arrives in a new format during diligence gets read as a number being hidden, even when the change was innocent, because the buyer's first move is to try to reconcile it to the old version and fail. New account groupings, a different date range, a renamed line, a switch from one system's export to another: each one costs a round of questions and a little credibility.

The companion habit is a variance threshold. Pick one and hold to it. Ten percent against the prior month is a workable default for most owner-run profit and loss statements, and the point is less the number than the discipline of writing the explanation before anyone asks for it. A one line note attached to the report is a manager in control. The same explanation given three days later in response to a question is a manager who did not notice.

What this really asks of you

The reason interim reporting slips is capacity, not carelessness. The person who closes your books is usually the same person pulling documents for the buyer, and diligence requests feel urgent while the monthly close feels routine. So the close is what gets postponed, and postponing it is what creates the gap.

That is a staffing problem with a straightforward answer: separate the two jobs before you sign anything. Someone runs the business's reporting on the normal calendar. Someone else carries the diligence workload. If the same person is doing both, one of them is going to suffer, and the buyer is going to be watching the one that does.

Where Thryve fits

Thryve Accounting & Advisory builds the reporting that holds up while a deal is running: a monthly close that lands on schedule, margin and customer reporting at the level of detail a buyer expects, a rolling cash forecast, and an adjustment schedule kept current with support attached rather than reconstructed at the end. If your business is heading toward a sale in the next one to five years, the reporting habits you build now are the same ones that carry you through the interim period without a stumble.

For the deal side, including what a letter of intent actually commits you to, Texas Exit Advisors and Optima Mergers & Acquisitions handle the process and the buyers. Thryve handles the numbers underneath it.

Last reviewed: August 2026. This is general information, not legal, tax, or accounting advice. Working capital definitions, interim covenants, and closing mechanics are set by your own transaction documents and vary by deal. Talk to your CPA and your M&A advisor about your specific situation.