How long does a business valuation take?
Hours for an indicative range once the figures are in one place, two to six weeks for a formal valuation. Most of that time is spent normalising accounts, not calculating.
Hours for an indicative range once your figures are in one place. Two to six weeks for a formal valuation from an advisor. The gap is not calculation time — it is the back-and-forth of normalising accounts and agreeing what counts as a one-off.
Where the time actually goes
| Stage | Share of elapsed time |
|---|---|
| Gathering documents | 30% |
| Normalising the earnings figure | 40% |
| Selecting and defending comparables | 15% |
| Calculation | 5% |
| Writing and review | 10% |
Seventy percent of a valuation is spent establishing what the business earns. The valuation itself is an afternoon.
How to make it faster
- Have three years of accounts and management figures reconciled beforehand
- Prepare the normalisation schedule with evidence for every add-back
- Produce revenue by customer, by year, before it is requested
- Know your capital expenditure history
- Have contracts and the shareholder agreement in one folder
Owners who arrive with this file routinely halve the elapsed time, and the same preparation is exactly what a buyer will ask for later — see preparing your business for sale.
The other clock
If you are valuing because you intend to sell, the valuation is the short part. A sale process typically runs six to twelve months from first conversation to completion, and the preparation that improves the outcome takes twelve months before that. How to value a business covers where the valuation sits in that sequence.