Operating diagnostic — $12,000

Is there enough here to justify a full review?

That is the only question the diagnostic answers. It is not a small review — it is triage. Around thirty exports, no contracts, no invoices, nobody interviewed, and a written answer in about two weeks telling you where the money is concentrated and whether it is worth going after.

In plain terms

The diagnostic

Finds out whether and where you have a problem. It reads your summaries — the lists and totals you already produce — and tells you which areas look wrong.

The review

Finds out what the problem is and what it costs you. It goes into the underlying records, contracts and people, and puts a number and a cause against each finding.

You can commission the review directly if you already know where the problem is. Most people do not, which is what the first one is for.

What we ask you for

Every organization keeps the same handful of registers, whatever it actually does. A law firm calls one of them a matter list and a manufacturer calls it a job list, but they answer the same question — what do you earn from, and what do you pay for. Almost all of this comes out of your accounting system as an export, in one click, by somebody who does not need to understand why we want it.

Around thirty requests. Registers, ageings and summaries. Nothing here requires a decision, a redaction or a meeting.

Trial balance, and your monthly results as you report them A profit and loss for most organizations; a statement of activities by fund if you are grant-funded, a budget-to-actual if you are public sector. Whatever your board actually sees.
Aged receivables and aged payables Who owes you and how long, who you owe and how long.
Spend by vendor, and your recurring payments The full list, not the top ten. The interesting ones are rarely in the top ten.
Income by line, customer, program, site or unit Fees, sales, contracts, grants, appropriations or reimbursements — however money reaches you and however you already cut it. We do not need it recut.
Write-offs, credits, adjustments, denials and disallowances Whatever your system calls the money that was expected and did not arrive, with any reason code attached. This is usually the single most revealing export in the set.
Your contract register The list — counterparty, value, renewal date, notice period. Not the contracts.
Headcount by month, with overtime and agency spend Aggregate. No names, no salaries, no personnel files.
Software and subscriptions you pay for With actual usage or license counts if you happen to have them.
Volumes and cycle times for your main flow Whatever unit your business counts in — matters, orders, jobs, claims, cases, shipments.
What somebody already told you Your last audit, management letter, inspection or consultant report, and anything raised that was never closed.

What we deliberately do not ask for

General ledger detail. Invoice-level revenue. The payroll register. The contracts themselves. Those four are where a full review spends its weeks, and asking for them is what makes a review a review. Leaving them out is why this costs $12,000 rather than $38,000 — and why it takes a morning of your finance team's time rather than a fortnight.

What we do with them

Look for concentration. In an operation that is running normally, cost and loss spread out roughly in proportion to activity. The finding is always where they do not.

A few counterparties carrying most of a change. Four percent of vendors accounting for sixty percent of an increase is not a procurement trend. It is four or five specific agreements.
One queue holding most of the aging. Receivables spread evenly across customers is a collections rhythm. Receivables piled into one segment is a dispute nobody escalated.
One account where every adjustment lands. Write-offs are supposed to be distributed. When they are not, the reason code usually names the process that is broken.
A gap between two numbers that describe the same thing. Contracted against billed, authorized against delivered, licenses bought against licenses used. Every one of those pairs should reconcile and most of them do not.
Something already found and never closed. The cheapest finding in any engagement is the one in a report somebody paid for three years ago.

What you get

A short written answer to the question at the top of this page, in about two weeks: where the loss appears concentrated, roughly what each area looks like it is worth, and which of them a full review would open first. Sized to an order of magnitude, not to the dollar — that is what the review is for.

If the answer is no, we say so.

Some operations are tidier than their owners fear. If the registers come back and nothing is concentrated anywhere interesting, the report says that, and we do not propose a review. It is a worse outcome for us and a perfectly good one for you, and it is the reason this is worth commissioning rather than taking our word for it.

And if you go ahead

Not ready for $12,000? The operating sounding is $3,500 and answers a narrower question: one area, the one you are most worried about, from three registers in five business days. It sizes nothing in money and looks nowhere else — that is what this page is for — but it needs no purchase order, and it is credited in full against this diagnostic, whenever you commission it.

The $12,000 is credited in full against a review, whenever you commission it. There is no deadline on that. If the diagnostic points somewhere worth going, it has cost you nothing.

Commission the diagnostic See it for your sector

Purchase order is the normal route. Prices, deposits and the PO form are on the ordering page.