Five years ago, a competent quality-of-earnings report on a mid-market business ran sixty to ninety pages. Today the same engagement, on a similar business, regularly produces a deliverable that exceeds one hundred and forty. The numbers do not move because businesses became more complex. They move because buyers became more careful — and because cross-border buyers, in particular, expect more documentation than buyers in their home market.
What is driving the inflation
Three forces account for most of the page growth. The first is heightened scrutiny on revenue sustainability. After several years of pandemic-era distortions, buyers want visible normalization that decomposes one-time effects, channel shifts, and pricing mix. A defensible QoE no longer surfaces a single normalized EBITDA; it presents an adjusted figure together with a sensitivity envelope around it.
The second is the growing weight of working capital and cash conversion analysis. Two cycles of supply chain disruption have made buyers — and especially lenders — pay closer attention to inventory dynamics, payment terms, and seasonality. The QoE working capital section, once a five-page schedule, is now a working chapter.
The third — and most important for the cross-border DACH–Greater China corridor — is reconciliation. Asian buyers reading a German QoE want to see HGB-to-IFRS adjustments laid out explicitly. They want their accounting team to be able to retrace each line. A vendor QoE that does not include this section forces the buy-side team to build it themselves, which costs weeks of process time.
“The numbers do not move because businesses became more complex. They move because buyers became more careful.”
What it means for DACH sellers
For sellers, the implication is straightforward. A vendor QoE prepared eight to twelve weeks before going to market, with the depth that today's Asian buyers expect — including the cross-border accounting reconciliation — will compress process timelines and reduce buy-side surprises. The economics work in the seller's favor: a relatively modest increment in vendor diligence cost can save weeks of exclusivity and prevent a re-trade of several percentage points of price.
Sellers preparing for 2026 cross-border processes should ask three questions of any vendor QoE provider. First: does the firm distinguish recurring from one-time adjustments transparently, or does it bury them in the bridge? Second: does the working capital section include sensitivity around the peg, or only a single number? Third: does the firm include a reconciliation section that allows an Asian buyer's accounting team to retrace the European reporting framework?
What sellers should not do
A vendor QoE that surfaces an aggressive EBITDA without sensitivity tables is worse than no QoE at all. It signals to sophisticated buyers that the seller is preparing to dispute, rather than to clarify. The buyer-side diligence team will produce its own bridge, and any number that the vendor cannot defend will be the first line item in the buyer's opening price reduction.
Length, in itself, is not the goal. The goal is depth where buyers will look hardest and brevity where the analysis is straightforward. The best QoEs we read are not the longest — they are the most ruthlessly organized.