The Discovery Deliverable
The Ground Truth Report
Most owner-operated businesses don't have a clear picture of their own finances. They have pieces — a POS system here, a bank account there, a stack of supplier invoices, a conversation with a bookkeeper. The Ground Truth Report assembles those pieces into a single, verified picture of the business as it actually exists.
The Ground Truth Report is the output of Ebla Advisory's Discovery Engagement — a fixed-scope, fixed-fee analysis that typically takes two to four weeks and draws from every primary source available: revenue records, point-of-sale data, bank statements, vendor and contractor records, payroll records, loan documents, and direct interviews with the owner.
No single source tells the complete story. The value is in the triangulation.
What the report covers
1. Business Reality Summary
What the business actually is — its true revenue, its real cost structure, its operating model — as distinct from what the owner believed before the engagement. This section often contains the most significant findings.
2. Financial Baseline
True revenue across all revenue streams. True margins by product, service line, or location. Full cost structure including labor, cost of goods, overhead, and debt service. Expressed in plain language, not accounting jargon.
3. Risk Register
Every identified risk, prioritized by urgency. Time-sensitive financial exposures the owner was unaware of — debt obligations, tax classification risks, pricing below cost, unresolved liabilities from prior personnel — are surfaced and ranked so the most urgent problems get addressed first.
4. Opportunity Map
What we found that could be improved — the highest-leverage areas expressed as specific, actionable findings. This is analysis: where the real leverage exists in this specific business, based on what the data revealed. Not a list of generic recommendations.
5. Implementation Roadmap
What Ebla Advisory will do in subsequent phases — a prioritized sequence of next steps, with indicative costs for each phase of implementation. The roadmap translates the Opportunity Map into concrete work and is the foundation for all subsequent engagement.
What the report is not
The Ground Truth Report is an analysis and a plan. It does not implement systems. It does not set up software. It does not make decisions on behalf of the owner. It produces the clarity required to make those decisions well.
At the end of Discovery, the client has a complete, verified picture of their business and a clear path forward. They can take that roadmap anywhere. Most choose to implement it with us.
What it costs — and why
The Discovery Engagement is priced at $3,500–5,000, fixed. The fee is not based on hours worked. It is based on the value of the clarity produced.
A business owner who discovers a significant undocumented liability through the Ground Truth Report — one that would have become a crisis without intervention — is not paying for two weeks of analysis. They are paying to avoid a problem that would have cost far more.
The fee is priced accordingly.
The Ground Truth Report is also the foundation that allows your accountant, attorney, or lender to do their best work. We prepare the picture. They act on it.