01 Comparable scores
The same diagnostic everywhere. One versioned rule set across every portco, so a 44 at one company means the same as a 44 at another.
Private equity & portfolio operations
Sponsor & portfolio programme
Same Flight Check, run across the portfolio
Find out which portfolio companies actually have a finance-ops problem.
Every operating partner has a view on which portcos are struggling with the close. Very few have evidence. Running the same free Flight Check across the portfolio produces a comparable read on all of them — including the honest answer that some are already lean and should be left alone.
Finance-automation practice by BetterWrk · No logins or ledger data in the Flight Check
Is this worth doing
This tends to be worth running when…
…versus when a portfolio-wide exercise would just create work.
Worth running
- You hold several companies with finance teams under ~15 people
- Reporting arrives late or inconsistently from some portcos
- You suspect manual finance work but can't size it
- A value-creation plan mentions "finance transformation" vaguely
- You're standardising reporting across the portfolio
- A portco is approaching an exit and the close won't survive diligence
Probably not yet
- One or two holdings, both already well instrumented
- A finance transformation programme is already mid-flight
- Portfolio companies share a single managed finance function
- The bottleneck you care about is commercial, not operational
- There's no appetite to act on what the evidence shows
Comparable, not intrusive
How a portfolio run actually works
The same free diagnostic, run consistently, so results can be compared rather than argued about. No system access is required to produce the first read.
- Each portco's finance lead runs the same Close Flight Check
- Nobody hands over logins, credentials or ledger data to do it
- Every result uses the same versioned rules, so scores are comparable
- Findings are graded by confidence, so weak signals stay marked weak
- Companies that are already lean are identified as such, explicitly
- You see which portcos have the largest evidenced gap, not the loudest CFO
- Paid assessments are then targeted only where the evidence supports one
- Results are shared with the sponsor only where the portco agrees
What a sponsor actually gets
A ranked, evidenced view of the portfolio
The point is triage. Most portfolios have two or three companies where finance-ops work pays back quickly, and several where it would be a distraction. Guessing which is which is expensive.
02 Ranked opportunity
Where the evidenced gap is largest. Ranked by findings and confidence, not by which management team asked loudest.
03 A skip list
Explicit "leave this one alone". Companies where the close is already healthy are named, so you don't spend capital proving it twice.
04 Key-person risk
Continuity exposure surfaced. Where a close depends on one person — a diligence problem long before it's an efficiency one.
05 Exit readiness signal
Whether the close survives scrutiny. A close that only one person can run is a finding a buyer will also make.
06 A bounded first step
$1,500 per targeted assessment. Fixed price, credited to any build, so testing a hypothesis doesn't require a programme budget.
Free to triage, fixed price to go deeper
The Flight Check is free at any number of companies
There is no per-seat or per-portco charge for the diagnostic. You only pay where you choose to run a $1,500 Finance Operations Assessment — and that fee is credited in full to any automation build that follows.
Portfolio triage
Free. Every portco runs the same Flight Check. You get a comparable ranking and a skip list.
Targeted assessment
$1,500 per company, only where the evidence justifies it. Findings, a cited skill, one deployed automation.
Managed operations
Optional. Keep deployed automations healthy across the portfolio under one operating boundary.
Illustrative launch pricing pending commercial validation. Portfolio-level commercial terms are agreed per engagement.
Named up front
What a portfolio run will not do
We would rather set this out now than have it surface in month two.
- It is not diligence, and it is not an audit of any portfolio company
- It cannot verify anything without the portco's participation
- A self-reported diagnostic can be gamed by a management team that wants it to be
- We won't share a portco's result with the sponsor unless they agree to it
- It won't tell you whether a CFO is performing — that is your judgment, not a score
- Some companies will come back clean, and we will say so plainly
Why we insist on portco consent
A diagnostic that finance teams believe is really a sponsor audit produces defensive answers, and defensive answers produce useless findings. Consent isn't just a privacy position — it's what makes the output worth reading.
Delivery & contracting: BetterWrk · Austin, Texas
Questions from operating partners
What sponsors ask first
Can we see results across the portfolio in one view?
Where each portfolio company agrees to share its result, yes — that's the point of running the same versioned diagnostic everywhere. Where a company doesn't agree, we won't pass it on. We'd rather give you eight honest results than ten coerced ones.
How long does it take a portco to run?
Minutes, by whoever actually owns the close — usually the controller rather than the CFO. There's no system access, no data pull and no IT involvement, which is why it survives contact with a busy finance team.
Is this useful pre-acquisition?
Only with the target's cooperation, and it is explicitly not diligence. It can be a useful structured conversation with a target's finance lead, but treat it as a diagnostic they ran, not as verified fact about the business.
What if a portco just wants to be left alone?
Then the Flight Check will probably say so, and that's a legitimate result. A diagnostic that never returns "you're fine" isn't a diagnostic, it's a sales funnel. Ours is built to be able to reach that answer.
Next step
Talk to a finance-ops specialist
Tell us roughly what the portfolio looks like and we'll come back on whether a run is worth doing — or book 20 minutes directly.
Start with one
Try it on a single portfolio company first.
It's free, it takes minutes, and you'll know within one company whether a portfolio-wide run is worth organising.