Three Steps To Determine The Value Of A Business

Drew Ferner
3 min readApr 13, 2023

Understanding and calculating business value can be done by following simple steps. You can follow the simple methods in this article when you want to value your small business. There are multiple other valuation methods for your business, and some may be more specific and appropriate based on the structure and complexity of your target business. But, the business valuation tips in this article may provide reliable results and estimate your business value depending on current profit, industry, and sales.

Evaluate The Seller’s Discretionary Earnings

Maximum professionals agree with the beginning point of small business value for normalizing or re-casting the business’s earnings to get the seller’s discretionary earnings.

You can consider it the pretext income of business before considering the non-cash expenses, interest expenses, income, and owners’ compensation. These are not anticipated to proceed in the future. When it comes to small businesses, they consider reporting their costs depending on tax returns, focusing on decreasing the tax burden.

It indicates that you can claim multiple deductions that can decrease your business’s income on the tax return. Due to this, utilizing the numbers of income from your business’s tax return can help in underestimating your company’s revenue.

The discretionary earnings provide you with a clear concept of the actual profit of your business potential by evaluating the revenues of the business. It is carried out by adding the unnecessary expenses listed on the tax return for running your business. It also includes the salary and one-time expenses that are not anticipated to happen again.

Subtract your business liabilities and add the business assets.

One of the primary steps in valuing your business is to consider the liabilities and assets not included in the discretionary earnings. When considering sales, leading companies follow the legal process for support, indicating that the buyer is purchasing the intangible and tangible items that can make the small business indeed what it is about. The seller helps retain the liabilities, but the terms of deals can differ from sale to sale.

Subtracting the liabilities and adding the assets is one of the easiest ways to get data about your business and confirm that you take advantage of essential liabilities. It is also necessary to remember that it may only include some drawbacks and can provide you with a precise estimate of the current debt.

Discover the SDE Multiplier

Businesses generally sell within 1 to 4 times their seller’s discretionary earnings. It is known as the multiplier. It can be the industry standard and specific multiplier, which differ in aspect. One can provide you with the general value depending on the industry averages, and another can give you a particular business value depending on variable factors of every business.

You can find out the multiplying discretionary earnings by checking your business’s media insights and quarterly reports. Depending on the business revenue and your overall cash flow, you can get the multiples for multiple industries. The best option would be consulting an appraiser or business broker for a personalized estimate.

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

Drew Ferner
Drew Ferner

Written by Drew Ferner

We help companies like yours double or even triple their value, leading to an incredible return when it comes time to sell.

No responses yet

Write a response