Owner/Sellers Can Be Their Own Worst Enemy

I think I'm going to buy QuickBooks software and lend it to my sellers and make them do their financials on it before I start showing their place. When I go to a listing a call and I see that they use QuickBooks already, I breath a sigh of relief because I know that I'll be able to decipher their books quickly and efficiently.

It very frustrating to go through all the motions and then lose a deal because the books are a mess. I have a restaurant listing that I'm having some trouble with because the sellers system for organizing is the pits. He basically puts every thing on a word document, every day. Oh and every day and months file is password protected. Then put has all his expenses lumped up by the month instead of broken up by expense category and they are also on separate password protected files. I simply don't have the time to open all these files and sort them out.

Now every time I bring him a perspective buyer they take one look at that mess and they get a head ache just looking at it. The sad thing is that he thinks he's done a great job. You might be wondering why I don't just ask him to format it differently, well I have. He said it's all right there they just have to take the time to go through it. So basically he is his own worst enemy.

It just goes back to, you can lead a horse.... I do the best I can to facilitate a deal for these people but sellers you have to organize your paperwork if you want your business to sell faster.