How long before selling should I start getting my numbers ready?

About three years before you want to sell. A buyer reads your last few years together, not your last year alone, so the years before the sale are the ones that have to hold up. Three years out, you can still change what they show.

A buyer or a lender reads a trend. One clean year that appears just before a sale looks prepared, because it was. Three years of monthly statements, each closed on time and each telling the same story, look like a business that runs that way.

The things buyers ask about take time to fix and longer to show. If two customers carry most of the revenue, spreading it takes a sales cycle or two. If pricing and approvals still wait for you, handing them over takes months, and the results of the handover take longer to appear in the numbers. If personal costs run through the company, taking them out is easy, but a buyer will still want to see the years after you stopped.

Starting late is not fatal, but it changes who sets the pace. Fix things three years out and you choose the order. Find them during a buyer’s review and you fix them on his timetable, with his lawyer watching.

What you can look at this week: pull the last thirty-six months of monthly statements. Check that every month was closed, and closed on time. List the costs that run through the company that a new owner would not carry. Then write down the decisions that still wait for you.