Scout Score & Matching
Which four of these forty are worth an hour?
Every listing arrives with two numbers, answering two different questions. A feed sorted by either one alone will mislead you.
Viable
Scout Score, out of 100
- Deal economics8.1/10
- Financial quality3.6/10
- Risk profile7.4/10
01 — Two numbers
Is it a good business? Is it right for you?
These come apart constantly. A superb business outside your budget is still not your deal. A mediocre one that fits your profile perfectly is still mediocre. Collapsing them into one number hides the case you most need to see.
74
Scout Score — the business
Deal quality on its own terms, 0–100. Deterministic: the same inputs always produce the same score, and it moves only when the deal does.
92%
Match — the fit
How closely this listing matches the buyer profile you set: industry, budget, geography, business type.
02 — What goes into the score
Four categories, each out of ten.
- Deal economicsThe SDE multiple against sector benchmarks, debt-service coverage, and how long the deal takes to pay itself back.
- Financial qualityRevenue trend, gross margin, and how hard the add-backs are working. The same ground a quality-of-earnings review covers.
- Risk profileCustomer concentration, how much revenue actually recurs, and how much of the business walks out with the current owner.
- Deal structureWhether the seller will carry a note, what the lease looks like, and whether the business clears the SBA bar.
03 — When something can't be scored
A missing number is missing — not a zero.
Listings are uneven. Plenty never mention add-backs, or the lease, or customer concentration. Scoring those as zero would punish a good business for a thin listing. It would quietly rank the best-written listings above the best businesses.
So a category is earned ÷ assessable. A factor we couldn't assess is removed from the denominator, not counted against the deal. If the add-backs weren't disclosed, Financial quality is scored out of what remained. The deal room then says the factor wasn't assessed, rather than pretending it failed.
It also means a score built on very little says so. The way to move it is not to argue with it. Get the documents and verify the earnings, at which point the score is recomputed on numbers that were checked.
04 — Matching
“Doesn't fit” and “doesn't say” are different answers.
A listing that omits the employee count hasn't failed your requirement. It just hasn't answered it. Match % keeps those apart, so a quiet listing isn't ranked below a worse business that filled in more fields.
Match against your profile
92%- IndustryHVAC & Plumbing
- Budget$1.15M
- LocationGreenville, SC
- EmployeesNot stated
The employee count wasn't disclosed, so it isn't counted as a match — and isn't counted against the listing either.
05 — Try it without an account
Score a deal you're already looking at.
The free Deal Analyzer runs the same scoring engine on figures you type in — no login, no card. It's the quickest way to see whether the score agrees with your own read.
Stop reading forty listings to find four.
Set a buyer profile and let everything arrive scored.
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