T Tekin Works
Live model · nothing here is a mockup

The repurchase obligation is coming.
The only question is whether you see it in time.

This is a five-minute walk through a real ESOP — a $78M manufacturer, 100% employee-owned since 2009, 416 participants, nine years of appraisals and a founder-era cohort about to retire together. Open each screen and see for yourself. You do not need to talk to anyone.

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One shared demo account. Nothing you do here affects anything real — the data resets every night.

demo@tideline.app  ·  demo1234
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  1. Start with the year that hurts

    A repurchase study gives you a total. A total is not actionable. What a CFO needs is the year, and what that year costs against what the business earns that year.

    Look at: the peak is 2032 at $5.1M — 42% of that year’s EBITDA. Thirteen of the sixteen years are above what this company said it could absorb from operating cash. And the shape: the columns climb from $590k to $5.1M and then never come back down. That is what a maturing ESOP looks like, and it is invisible in a study commissioned every three years. Open Outlook →

  2. Click the tallest bar

    This is the screen the product exists for. Every figure opens into the people behind it and the section of the Code that put them in that year. Nothing is recalculated to explain itself — the explanation is the arithmetic.

    $2.2M of it is early retirement. And the model says something most plans do not know: IRC §409(o) only requires the one-year clock at normal retirement age. Retirement before that is not a qualifying separation and the statute would allow six. Paying early is a decision somebody made, not a law. $1.1M is people who already left — resigned years ago, still unpaid, because the plan holds terminated participants the full six years §409(o) allows. Thirty-one of them. They appear in no payroll report anywhere. $369k is diversification. Participants at 55 with ten years in the plan moving stock out under §401(a)(28)(B) — without leaving the company. The part sponsors most often forget is coming.

    Then click a name. Dale Okonkwo, the former COO, is on instalment 7 of 7 — because his balance crossed the §409(o)(1)(C)(ii) threshold and the plan may stretch him past five years.

    Open the peak year →

  3. Three ways to fund it, and the trap in the middle one

    Same census, same appraisal, same assumptions. None of the three makes the obligation smaller — what changes is where the shares end up and what that does to the price of the ones that remain.

    StrategyCash in the windowEverything, eventuallyShare value at the end
    Redemption$62.8M$62.8M$164
    Recycling$52.7M$52.7M$68
    Releverage$64.0M$65.3M$153
    Read only the first column and borrowing wins. It does not. A loan taken in the closing years pushes $1.3M of repayments past the edge of the chart. The product says so out loud, because that is the slide that would embarrass you in front of a board. Recycling looks $10M cheaper and is not either. The same equity is spread over four times as many shares — and the shares go back into active accounts, so the plan buys them again when those people leave. Open Strategies →

  4. The screen a study cannot have

    A repurchase study is accurate the day it is delivered and decays silently after that. Nothing in a PDF tells you its turnover assumption has been wrong for three years. This screen asks the same question of every input: what did we assume, what actually happened, and how far apart are they?

    Growth: the scenario assumes 6.5%. The appraiser has delivered 10.4% over five years. Counter-intuitively that means the obligation is being understated. Turnover: the tables say 35.4 people a year. The census says 31 — counted, by matching participant IDs across two snapshots, not assumed. And the one that matters: the model was re-run using only the data that existed at the end of 2025. It said $3.08M for 2026. The company paid $3.41M. It has been running 11% light, and it will keep running light until somebody turns the retirement dial. Open Freshness →

  5. Then send it to the bank

    A board-ready PDF that states its own provenance: which census file, imported when and by whom, which appraisal, whether anybody has ever reviewed the assumptions — and which assumptions are still at our defaults rather than your own history.

    It flags its own weaknesses. Ten of eleven assumptions still at default, marked as such, in the document you hand a lender. A tool that hides that is a tool that gets found out in the meeting. Open the report →

What it will not do

It will never value your stock. IRC §401(a)(28)(C) reserves that to your independent qualified appraiser, and every figure here is your appraiser’s number moved by a growth rate you set and can see. The verification suite asserts it: double the appraisal and the answer doubles exactly.

It issues no actuarial certification and no statement of actuarial opinion. It does not run §409(p) or nondiscrimination testing — that is your TPA’s work. It does not recommend a funding strategy; it lays out the consequences and the decision stays with your board and your trustee. Where this model and your plan document disagree, the plan document governs, and every report says so on its face.

If you want it on your own domain

$15,000 a year for up to 750 participants. $25,800 unlimited. Billed annually.

For comparison: a repurchase obligation study runs $15,000 to $40,000 and arrives every two to four years, as a PDF that is out of date on delivery. This is about what one study costs — except it arrives every year, it is current the morning your board asks, and you can ask it a second question without an invoice.

Priced per plan, never per seat. Give the trustee, the lender and your outside adviser a read-only login at no extra cost — the second reader is what makes the first one trust the number. Your data is never pooled with another customer’s. Keep your consultant; this does not replace the study, it tells you what the study would say today. Reply with one question about your own plan and you will get a straight answer the same day, including if this is not the right fit for you.

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