Do I Need a Quality of Earnings Report to Buy a Small Store?
Written by Christopher Krassnig - Founder - Kairos Exchange and ZenoX Media. Last reviewed 19 July 2026.
A full quality of earnings report is built for seven-figure deals and priced accordingly, from several thousand dollars up. Below that, what a buyer actually needs is the same assurance at deal-appropriate cost: revenue reconciled to source systems, margins reconciled to ad spend, and refunds checked. That is what order-level verification or a fixed-fee diligence report delivers.
Looking to buy one? Join the buyer waitlist
What a QoE Actually Contains
An accountant's independent rebuild of the earnings: revenue traced to bank deposits, expenses normalized, add-backs challenged, working capital analyzed. It exists because lenders will not lend, and acquirers will not wire, against management's own spreadsheet. The logic is sound at every deal size; only the price tag is not.
The Gap under a Million
CPA firms serve the traditional market from about a million upward, and almost nobody packages the same assurance for a 100,000 euro store. Fixed-fee diligence fills that gap: a human reads the store's raw order and ad data against the claims and reports in five working days, at a price sized to the deal.
When to Still Buy the Full Report
Complex inventory accounting, multiple entities, meaningful revenue outside the platform, or a lender that requires one. At that point you are in genuine QoE territory and should pay for it. For a single-store Shopify acquisition with platform-native revenue, order-level reconciliation answers the same question for a fraction of the cost.
Buying a Store Somewhere Else?
Kairos Due Diligence works on any deal - Flippa, a broker, a private sale. A person reads the store's raw numbers and writes you a report. If the deal is bad, the report says walk away. From EUR 1.5K, no account needed.
Answered. Now Get in Line for the First Store
When the doors open, verified stores go to the waitlist first. You have done the reading part. The list is the part with a queue.