Know the cost of the deal while you can still act on it.
Advilink is live cost and scope control for M&A diligence. Prepare the advisor budget, track committed and actual spend against scope, and export the IC-ready cost story, without chasing anyone.
Advilink is the live operating layer for diligence cost. Set the deal up once, then keep a continuously current view of budgeted, committed and actual advisor spend against scope.
One deal. Every workstream, advisor and pound, in one current view.
| Workstream | Budget | Actual | Forecast | Variance | vs budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legal | £420k | £268k | £408k | +£12k | |
| Financial | £340k | £231k | £356k | −£16k | |
| Tax | £190k | £158k | £238k | −£48k | |
| Commercial | £180k | £71k | £166k | +£14k | |
| Environmental | £110k | £14k | £96k | +£14k |
Advisory fees run to 3–8% of deal value. Most of it is tracked in spreadsheets and inboxes.
When you run diligence on a deal, you hire legal, tax, financial, commercial and environmental advisors. The fees are large, and the true cost position is usually unknown until the invoices land, often after the deal has closed.
Spend lives in spreadsheets, emails and invoice PDFs
Budget vs. actual is reconstructed by hand, under time pressure, from scattered sources that are always slightly out of date.
Scope changes are agreed verbally, then tracked informally, if at all
By the time a change shows up on an invoice, the work is done and the leverage to challenge it is gone.
Invoices arrive after close, too late to challenge
Overruns are discovered after they happen, not while there is still time to act on them.
The deal lead becomes the one chasing advisors for numbers
Time that should go to the relationship and the deal goes to commercial follow-up and assembling a cost story for the IC from hindsight.
One job, done thoroughly: advisory cost and scope control.
Not a data room. Not a project tracker. Not a billing platform. A live operating layer for the commercial side of diligence.
Budgeted vs. committed vs. actual, by workstream, always current
Every line carries budget, committed, actual and forecast, with variance and a Red / Amber / Green status. You see the cost position of the whole deal at a glance, and where it is heading.
- RAG status per budget line, rolled up to the deal
- Forecast spend, not just spend to date
- Variance against budget, in cash and as a signal
Turn verbal scope changes into a record with a cost impact
Capture each change in scope with its cost impact and an approval status, so a change is no longer just a conversation. Catch scope creep early, while you can still challenge it.
- Cost impact and rationale attached to every change
- Approval status: requested, approved, declined
- Out-of-scope work surfaced before it is invoiced
Structured spend updates, with an overrun-risk signal
Advisors give structured spend and status updates carrying an overrun-risk flag. Collected manually first, automated over time, ingested from engagement letters and invoices, so tracking happens around the relationship, not on top of it.
- Spend-to-date and forecast in the advisor's own words
- Overrun-risk signal before the number is final
- No new tooling for advisors to adopt
The IC-ready cost story, generated rather than assembled by hand
Export Excel and IC-ready summaries of the diligence approach, scope, costs, variance and rationale. Hand finance, partners and the investment committee a clean, current picture in minutes.
- IC-ready summary: approach, scope, spend, variance, rationale
- Excel export for finance and reconciliation
- Always reflects the current position, not stale estimates
“I built Advilink because I have managed diligence budgets first-hand, and chased the numbers from a spreadsheet after the fact. Live cost and scope control is the part of the deal that has gone unowned for too long.”
Catch one scope change and the tool has paid for itself.
The cost of control is a rounding error against the cost of not having it.
A neutral operating layer, built for confidential deal data.
Advilink sits between deal leads and advisors without taking sides, and treats deal information the way deal teams expect: enterprise-grade controls by default, data minimised to what cost control needs.
Take control of the diligence budget on your next deal.
We're onboarding a small group of design partners: boutique PE, independent sponsors and corp dev teams who run their own diligence. Tell us about a live or upcoming deal.