Advisory built for the decisions that shape your business
Practical, lender-ready financial advice for Canadian businesses that are growing, buying, refinancing or restructuring.
Every business reaches moments where the next move carries real weight: a bank facility that needs renewing, an acquisition that could double your footprint, a cash squeeze that arrived faster than the sales did. In those moments, the quality of your financial analysis and the strength of your relationships with lenders decide the outcome.
Sapere Advisory works alongside owners, founders and management teams across Canada to prepare for those moments and get through them well. We combine hands-on transaction and lending experience with the modeling and reporting discipline of an accounting practice, so the advice you receive is grounded in numbers a bank, investor or buyer will accept.
Our flagship service is Capital Advisory: arranging and negotiating the debt and structured capital that Canadian businesses grow on. Around it sit seven further services that cover the other financial decisions an owner-managed business faces over its life: managing cash, buying or selling, restructuring, planning for growth, valuing the business, managing risk and leading the finance function.
Eight practices, one connected team.
Capital Advisory is our flagship. The other seven cover the financial decisions an owner-managed business faces over its life.
Capital Advisory: where most client relationships begin
Most businesses first come to Sapere Advisory because they need financing: a first bank facility, a CSBFL loan for a new location, the debt behind an acquisition, or a refinancing after a difficult renewal. Our Capital Advisory team prepares the business to be underwritten well, takes it to the lenders whose appetite fits and negotiates a facility that supports the plan. Because we build the financial model, the lender package and the covenant structure ourselves, and because Sapere Accounting can produce the statements lenders ask for, financings close faster and on better terms.
Learn more on the Capital Advisory page, or book a capital diagnostic to find out what your business can borrow and on what terms.
Who we work with
Our clients are typically owner-managed and mid-market businesses with revenues from roughly $2 million to $100 million, operating in franchising and quick-service restaurants, logistics and transportation, wholesale distribution, retail, automotive services, manufacturing, professional services and real estate. Many are preparing for a first significant bank facility; others are on their third acquisition. What they share is a need for advice that is direct, numerically rigorous and delivered by people who have sat across the table from lenders.
How we work
Understand
A focused diagnostic of your business, your numbers and your objective, whether that is a facility, a purchase, a sale or breathing room.
Prepare
We build the model, the plan and the supporting package to the standard the counterparty expects, and we stress-test it before anyone else sees it.
Execute
We run the process: approaching lenders or buyers, managing questions, negotiating terms and keeping the timeline on track.
Support
After closing, we help you meet reporting covenants, track performance against plan and prepare for the next decision.
Why Sapere Advisory
Lender-grade work product
Our models and plans are built the way credit teams read them: full three-statement forecasts, explicit assumptions, DSCR and leverage tests, and sensitivities.
One firm, connected disciplines
Advisory sits alongside Sapere Accounting, Sapere Analytics and Sapere AI, so tax, compilation, data and reporting questions get answered in-house rather than referred out.
Canadian market focus
We know the Schedule I banks, credit unions, BDC, EDC, Farm Credit Canada, the Canada Small Business Financing Program and the alternative lenders active in this market, and how each of them underwrites.
Senior attention
Engagements are led by experienced advisors from first meeting to close. You will not be handed to a junior team once the proposal is signed.
Common questions.
Quick answers about sapere advisory, based on current Canadian tax and accounting rules.
Do you only work with businesses in Ontario?
Are you a lender or a broker?
Start with a conversation
Tell us what you are trying to achieve and we will tell you, candidly, whether and how we can help.