The 90-Day Audit.
Multiple entities, real estate, a larger portfolio, or a deal in motion? Over three focused months we audit all six areas of your financial life, line by line, and hand you a quantified, prioritized action list, with the biggest moves already implemented, not just recommended.
Six areas. Line by line.
Not a questionnaire and a canned report. A working audit of the documents that actually run your financial life: returns, statements, policies, and entity papers.
01 · Tax Planning
The lens everything else is planned through, and where the biggest dollars usually hide.
- Line-by-line review of your returns & entity structure
- Missed deductions & elections, quantified in dollars
- Strategies that apply now get implemented now
02 · Investment Planning
Every account, every fee, every holding, measured against what the plan actually needs.
- Fee & risk analysis on every account
- Allocation, tax-efficiency & asset-location review
- Alternative investments & K-1 inventory
03 · Estate & Legal Planning
The documents and the structure, reviewed together, so your plan survives contact with reality.
- Trust & estate document review, or a plan to get them
- Beneficiary & account-titling audit
- LLC & corporation structure feedback
04 · Insurance & Asset Protection
Closing the gaps before they cost you, without anyone trying to sell you a policy.
- Full policy inventory: personal & commercial
- Coverage gaps & premium right-sizing
- Honest review: we don't sell insurance
05 · Cash Flow & Income Planning
Where the money actually goes, and a system so it goes where you decided.
- Where the money actually goes, reviewed yearly
- Yield on idle cash & set-aside strategy
- Automated saving & transfer systems
06 · M&A & Exit Structure When a deal is in motion
Most of the tax outcome on a sale is locked the day you sign. If there is a buyer at the table, this is where we spend the audit, working alongside your attorney and banker.
- Asset sale versus stock sale, modeled side by side before you commit
- Deal structure reviewed while it is still cheap to change, before the LOI
- How the purchase price gets split, and what that split costs you
- Whether your shares qualify for the small business stock exclusion
- Rollover equity and earnouts, so deferred money is not taxed today
- The tax benefits buyers quietly keep, negotiated back to your side
Five steps, thirty days apart.
A fixed cadence, so the audit actually finishes, and the findings turn into moves, not a binder on a shelf.
Discovery Call
Free, 20 minutes. Your income, entities, and assets, and whether the audit is the right fit.
Discovery Confirmation
We scope the engagement, gather the documents, and set the 90-day schedule.
Solutions, Part I
The first deep-dives land: tax planning first, because that's where the biggest dollars usually are.
Solutions, Part II
Investments, insurance, estate & legal, cash flow, and any live deal. The full picture, quantified.
Implementation & Maintenance
The action list gets worked, not shelved, with planner calls every 30 days if you continue.
A to-do list, not a binder on a shelf.
The audit ends with a written, prioritized plan. A representative first-year list runs about sixty real action items, built from your findings.
A prioritized action list
Written and ranked across all six areas: amended returns, elections, restructurings, coverage fixes, titling corrections, and deal structure where a sale is in play. Yours is built from your audit, not a template.
The dollar impact of each move
Every recommendation carries a number, what it's worth, so you know exactly what to do first and why.
The biggest moves, already made
Strategies that apply now get implemented during the audit, not parked on a recommendations page waiting for someday.
A running start, not a sunk cost
Continue with Tulip and the audit fee is credited toward your first months. The audit becomes the front end of an ongoing relationship.
Sample action items.
A representative first-year list, roughly sixty real items of the kind we build, prioritize, and then execute together. Yours is built from your audit findings.
Tax Planning 18 items
- Amend prior-year returns to capture missed deductions
- Run a reasonable-compensation study and reset officer salary
- Make the state pass-through-entity (PTET) election
- Implement the Augusta Rule (Sec. 280A), with comps and minutes
- Put the kids on payroll: real job descriptions, their own Roth IRAs
- Order a cost-segregation study on the commercial building
- Install a safe-harbor 401(k) + profit-sharing plan
- Right-size quarterly estimates and stop lending the IRS an interest-free float
+ 10 more, built from your audit findings
Estate & Legal 11 items
- Draft the revocable living trust with your estate attorney
- Sign pour-over wills, powers of attorney, healthcare directives
- Fund the trust: retitle the home, brokerage accounts & LLC interests
- Review and update beneficiaries: 401(k)s, IRAs, life insurance, HSAs
- Verify deeds and titling on every real-estate parcel
- Set the annual gifting plan: family & charitable
+ 5 more, built from your audit findings
Investments 8 items
- Cut fund-level fees: swap high-expense funds for low-cost equivalents
- Reset risk to target and set a written rebalancing policy
- Harvest losses in taxable accounts against gains
- Fix asset location: the right holdings in the right account types
- Build the K-1 tracking system across entities, funds & deals
+ 3 more, built from your audit findings
Cash Flow & Income 7 items
- Move idle cash to high-yield savings for real yield
- Automate the sweep: operating account to savings, on a schedule
- Automate retirement-account contributions
- Build the set-asides: taxes, operating reserve, opportunities
- Run the annual cash-flow review, where every dollar actually went
+ 2 more, built from your audit findings
Insurance & Protection 6 items
- Inventory every policy: auto, home, umbrella, life, disability, business
- Close the umbrella gap: liability limits matched to your net worth
- Shop the P&C package at renewal for better pricing
- Review commercial coverage: liability, workers' comp, E&O, cyber
+ 2 more, built from your audit findings
M&A & Exit 10 items · when a deal is live
- Model an asset sale against a stock sale, side by side, before the LOI is signed
- Review how the purchase price is allocated, it drives the rate you actually pay
- Carve out personal goodwill where it is defensible
- Get the restructuring steps in the right order, the sequence matters more than people think
- Check whether your shares qualify for the small business stock exclusion
- Structure rollover equity so the piece you keep is not taxed today
- Model the earnout, including the interest cost nobody quotes you
- Separate escrow from earnout, they are taxed differently and routinely confused
- Negotiate the transaction tax benefits instead of conceding them to the buyer
- Clean up entity and election paperwork before diligence finds it for you
Plus the quality-of-earnings prep, the working capital peg, and any estate move that has to happen while the valuation is still low.
Sixty things you'd otherwise be doing alone, found in the audit, prioritized by dollar impact, and worked down together over the year. This is the second job we take off your plate.
One fixed fee. Fully credited if you continue.
No hourly meters and no surprises: the fee is set on your discovery call and never changes mid-engagement.
Under $1M Income
The full six-area audit for households and owners under $1M of annual income.
- All six areas audited line by line
- Written, prioritized action list with dollar impact
- Biggest strategies implemented during the audit
- 100% credited toward your first months if you continue
Over $1M Income
The same audit, built for greater complexity: multi-entity, real-estate heavy, or a deal in motion.
- Everything in the audit, at greater depth
- Multi-entity & real-estate portfolio review
- Deal, transaction & exit analysis where in motion
- 100% credited toward your first months if you continue
Larger or multi-entity engagements are quoted individually on your discovery call. And because we're a fiduciary, if we can't find you more value than the fee, we'll tell you that up front.
Before you book.
Who is the 90-Day Audit for?
Complex situations: business owners with multiple entities, families with real estate or larger portfolios, anyone with a deal in motion. If your financial life has outgrown a once-a-year tax appointment and a quarterly portfolio statement, the audit is built for you.
What do you need from me?
Documents, not hours. Your recent returns, account statements, insurance policies, and entity paperwork, uploaded once through a secure portal. We do the heavy lifting from there; your time commitment is the scheduled calls.
Do you actually implement, or just recommend?
Both. Strategies that apply now get implemented during the audit itself. The rest lands on a prioritized action list with the dollar impact of each move, so nothing gets parked on a recommendations page waiting for someday.
I have a buyer circling. Is it too late?
Not if you haven't signed the definitive agreement. Most of the tax outcome is locked at signing, so the window that matters is right now: how the deal is structured, how the price gets split, what you roll over, and which tax benefits end up on your side of the table instead of the buyer's. We work that alongside your attorney and banker. If the deal has already closed, we shift to post-exit planning, which is its own project.
What happens after the 90 days?
Most clients continue into an ongoing relationship: planner calls every 30 days, year-round tax planning, and a team that works the action list down with you. If you'd rather take the list and run with it yourself, it's yours either way.
Is the fee really 100% credited?
Yes. Continue with Tulip after the audit and the full audit fee is credited toward your first months. The audit becomes your running start, not a sunk cost.
What if there's nothing to find?
Then we'll tell you that on the free discovery call, before you've paid anything. That's the fiduciary test we hold ourselves to: if we can't find you more value than the fee, we say so up front.
Built, not just advised.
Bring the complexity: the entities, the properties, the portfolio, the deal in motion. In 90 days you'll know exactly what to do, in what order, and what each move is worth, with one team holding the whole picture, the way a family office would, instead of four professionals each holding a piece of it.
Book a 20-Minute Discovery Call