FDD workbench
Every adjustment carries its evidence
Quality of earnings and working capital, on reviewed spreads.
- Reported EBITDA412,600Spread p. 7
- Related-party rent+38,400Contract, p. 3
- One-off legal costs+21,900Invoice bundle
- Adjusted EBITDA472,900Review ready
The workbench
What is in it
Quality of earnings
A computed base from the reviewed spread, then adjustment rows on top — each one a line a reviewer can accept or challenge.
Net working capital
The working-capital schedule and its normalisation, on the same figures the QoE bridge is using.
Net debt
Debt-like items assembled explicitly rather than assumed, so the equity bridge survives the other side's questions.
Evidence per row
An adjustment without evidence is visible as such. Attach the document, name the page, and the row stops being an assertion.
Eighteen red-flag checks
A standard checklist run against the file, so the obvious things are never the thing you missed at 2am.
Findings register
Findings recorded once, with their severity and status, feeding the report instead of living in a side document.
Review
A schedule that is review-ready, or honestly not
Schedules carry a review gate. Until the bases and adjustments pass it, the schedule is a working draft — and it says so, everywhere it appears.
Because the inputs are the same reviewed spreads that feed analysis, the diligence file and the ratio exhibits cannot drift apart.
- Computed bases, explicit adjustments
- Review-ready state visible on the schedule
- Shared figures with analysis and FP&A
- Findings and red flags in the same record
- Reported EBITDA412,600Spread p. 7
- Related-party rent+38,400Contract, p. 3
- One-off legal costs+21,900Invoice bundle
- Adjusted EBITDA472,900Review ready
Why teams move their diligence here
The spreadsheet problems this removes
- No workbook where the bridge and the schedule disagree by 40 million
- No adjustment whose origin nobody remembers three weeks later
- No separate red-flag document that was last updated at kickoff
- No copy of the statements that has quietly diverged from the file
- No question in the review meeting that cannot be answered by opening the row
About diligence
Can we still export to Excel?
Yes — teams routinely take the schedules out for a client's own template. The difference is that the export is a snapshot of an evidenced record rather than the record itself.Is the red-flag checklist configurable?
The eighteen shipped checks are standard and fixed today; findings are free-form, so anything extra your firm looks for gets recorded there. Configurable checklists are a roadmap item.
See it read your own document
Bring one file you already know well. Thirty minutes is enough to tell whether this belongs in your firm.