What documents do I need for a business valuation?
Three years of accounts, management figures, revenue by customer, contracts and a capex history. Seventy percent of valuation time is spent gathering these.
Less than most owners expect, and most of it already exists. Roughly seventy percent of the elapsed time in a valuation goes on gathering and reconciling these rather than on any calculation.
The core file
- Three years of statutory accounts
- Three years of management figures, reconciled to those accounts
- Current year to date
- Revenue by customer, by year — the single most-requested item
- A list of one-off costs with evidence for each
- Owner compensation and benefits, itemised
- Capital expenditure by year
- Debt: loans, leases, outstanding tax
Useful, not essential
Customer contracts with their renewal dates. The organisational chart. Property leases. Supplier agreements with any exclusivity or price protection. A short note on why revenue moved in any year it moved more than 15%.
The one owners never have ready
Revenue by customer by year. It is requested in the first hour of every process, it exists in every accounting system, and almost nobody has exported it before being asked. Produce it early — it also tells you your own concentration figure, which you need before anyone else calculates it for you.
How to value a business covers what happens with the file; preparing your business for sale covers assembling it properly.