Insights
Sharper thinking on every deal, close, and decision.
Practical guidance from the senior advisors behind OpsFi's engagements — across M&A, diligence, fund finance, and the CFO's office. AI-native research, human judgment, institutional rigor.
AI in M&A: Where It Adds Edge, and Where Human Judgment Still Wins
AI in M&A adds real edge in deal sourcing, document-heavy due diligence, and first-pass data extraction, compressing weeks into hours. It breaks on the parts that decide outcomes: normalizations, materiality, negotiation, and governance. The defensible model is senior practitioners owning every judgment call, with AI making them faster.
Quality of Earnings Report: What It Covers, What It Costs, and When You Need One
A quality of earnings report is an independent analysis that tests whether a target's reported EBITDA is real, recurring, and sustainable — and whether the number a buyer is pricing off will survive to completion. It is not an audit, and on most institutional deals it is now table stakes.
How to Value a Private Company for Sale: DCF, Comps, and Bridging the Gap
How to value a private company for sale comes down to triangulating three methods — DCF, trading comparables, and precedent transactions — into a defensible range, not a single number, then using structure (earn-outs, deferred consideration, locked-box mechanisms) to bridge the gap between what you want and what a buyer will pay.
The Crypto CFO Playbook for 2026: Finance Under ASU 2023-08 and the GENIUS Act
A crypto CFO in 2026 must run finance under two new regimes: FASB's ASU 2023-08, which marks qualifying crypto to fair value through net income each reporting date, and the GENIUS Act, which imposes 1:1 reserve, monthly disclosure, and examination duties on stablecoin issuers. This playbook turns both into an operating model.
How to Choose an AI Implementation Partner for Finance: Build vs Buy vs Partner
An AI implementation partner for finance is one of three delivery models — build, buy, or partner — and the right choice is made per use case, not for the whole function. Evaluate any partner on five criteria: domain depth, workflow fit, human-in-the-loop governance, IP ownership, and capacity gained over tools deployed.
How to Prepare for Financial Due Diligence Before You Raise, Refinance, or Sell
To prepare for financial due diligence before a raise or sale, run the process on yourself first: clean three years of historicals, document every EBITDA add-back to a QoE standard, and build a model and data room that survive interrogation — starting six to twelve months out.
Audit Talent Shortage Solutions: Why Permanent, Dedicated Teams Beat Surge Staffing
The most durable audit talent shortage solution is structural, not a recruiting tactic: a permanently employed, dedicated team of qualified auditors whose institutional knowledge compounds year over year, unlike surge staffing, agencies, and commodity offshoring, which reset the same revolving door every busy season.
How to Prepare Your Business for Sale: A Sell-Side Readiness Playbook
To prepare your business for sale, do the buyer's diligence first: 12–18 months out, reconstruct and stress-test your own earnings, working capital, and customer concentration, then commission a sell-side quality of earnings report. Sellers who pre-empt buyer diligence defend a higher multiple and close faster.
How to Run a Faster, Audit-Ready Month-End Close Process
A faster, audit-ready month-end close process means GAAP-aligned statements within 3-5 business days that survive an audit and buyer diligence. You get there by pairing senior controller discipline with AI that handles the high-volume reconciliation first pass — while experienced accountants own accruals, judgment, and exceptions.
In-House vs Outsourced Fund Administration: A 2026 Decision Guide for Emerging Managers
For most emerging managers, in-house vs outsourced fund administration is the wrong question. Outsourcing wins on cost and audit independence below roughly $500M AUM; in-house only justifies its overhead at scale. The real decision is which kind of outsourced model you trust.
EBITDA Add-Backs: How Diligence Separates Real Adjustments From Inflated Ones
EBITDA add-backs are adjustments that bridge a company's reported earnings to a higher 'adjusted' figure used to set the price. Diligence separates real from inflated ones by sorting each into four categories — one-off, run-rate, pro forma, owner/discretionary — and testing whether it is real, non-recurring, and documented.
Why AI Projects Fail in Finance, and What the 5% Do Differently
The reason why AI projects fail in finance is rarely the model. The most rigorous research pins it on a workflow gap: tools bolted onto unchanged processes, run without senior judgment, that never learn the business. The 5% that succeed redesign the workflow first and keep an experienced human in the loop.
Crypto Accounting Under GAAP: A Practitioner's Guide to ASU 2023-08 and Audit-Ready Books
Crypto accounting under GAAP changed on January 1, 2025: FASB's ASU 2023-08 requires in-scope crypto to be measured at fair value each period, with gains and losses in net income. Audit-ready books now need a reconciled on-chain subledger and granular disclosures most generalist accounting can't produce.
Defensible Private Equity NAV Valuation: Illiquid Assets Under SEC and Auditor Scrutiny
A private equity NAV valuation is defensible when an examiner or auditor can trace it from raw inputs to fair value with no unexplained leaps. In 2026 that means a written policy, recent calibration, documented judgment, and a clean governance trail — because the SEC's FY2026 priorities and the 2025 IPEV guidelines now demand it.
Offshore Audit Quality Compliance: An FRC and PCAOB Framework for Offshoring Without Losing Quality
Yes — regulators accept offshore audit work, but never as a substitute for quality. Offshore audit quality compliance depends on senior oversight, ISQM 1 integration, ISA 230-grade documentation, and human-in-the-loop AI. Here is the FRC and PCAOB framework, and how to build a model that survives inspection.
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