The eight weighted criteria score a candidate out of 100 — a higher score means a stronger deal, but no single low score kills it alone. Gates are separate pass/fail checkpoints: if a candidate fails one, it is rejected regardless of how well it scores everywhere else. Think of it like a job candidate — the scorecard is the résumé; the gates are "must be legally authorized to work here." A brilliant résumé does not override a failed background check.

Four of the eight criteria double as gates: Regulatory, Financial, Lease, and the broadened Team/owner-dependency item. The two newest gates — undisclosed liabilities and unfavorable purchase economics — are gates only. They do not carry their own weighted score; they simply end the deal if triggered.

Status (Draft → In review → Approved/Blocked) should track diligence progress, not gut feel. A row starts in Draft until you have real data to evaluate against the "Evidence needed" column. It moves to In review once your team (Darrell, Max, Pedro) has gathered that evidence for a specific candidate and someone is actively assessing it. It becomes Blocked the moment a rejection-gate condition is triggered for that candidate — regardless of how good the rest of the file looks, since gates override score. It only becomes Approved when both you and your partner sign off that the "Target state" column has been met.

Priority should reflect deal risk, not just the criterion's weight. The gate criteria (Regulatory, Financial, Lease, and the broadened Team/owner-dependency item) stay Critical by definition — a failure there kills the deal regardless of everything else. The rest can flex: a criterion with a high weight but low real-world risk for a specific candidate (say, Location, if the target is obviously in a strong district) can sit at Medium even though it's worth 15%.

Current confidence (Low/Medium/High) is about how much you trust the evidence, separate from whether the evidence looks good. A candidate could have glowing financials that are still Low confidence because you're relying on seller-reported numbers with no bank reconciliation yet. It only becomes High once you and your partner have independently verified the underlying documents — not just received them.

Last reviewed is simplest: the date someone on your side actually looked at the evidence for that specific candidate, not the date the row was created.

This table is meant to be reused across multiple candidates, so it implicitly assumes one target at a time right now. You may eventually want a "candidate" field to track more than one opportunity at once — flag it if you want that added.

Owner is who is accountable for this record — a dropdown of the same role groups used in the working-screen filters, plus CA and DG for the two founders, and Unassigned / Shared for anything not yet claimed or deliberately joint. Add more names later by editing this file.

Category is currently a label only — editing it does not move a record between sidebar sections. A record filed under Leadership Alignment stays there even if its Category text is changed. That's a deliberate simplification for now; true re-filing between sections would mean restructuring how records are stored, so it's left as free text until that's worth doing.