Trade business valuation calculator

What small trades actually sell on

Small trade businesses are rarely valued on revenue or on net profit as filed. They sell on seller's discretionary earnings — what the business genuinely puts in one working owner's pocket over a year.

That means adding your own wage back to the profit, because a buyer would pay themselves instead of you. It also means adding back one-off and personal costs that a new owner would not carry: the family member on the payroll, the one-off legal bill, the truck that is really the family car.

What moves the multiple

A business that runs without the owner sits at the top of any range. One where the owner is the business sits at the bottom, and sometimes below it, because what is being sold is a job rather than an asset.

• How much of the work depends on you personally — the single biggest factor, and usually the one that hurts
• Recurring contracts and maintenance plans, which are worth far more than one-off work
• Staff who will stay, with the licenses the work requires
• Whether the customer list is genuinely transferable or lives in your phone
• The state of the vehicles and equipment a buyer inherits

Why this gives a range

Anything presenting a single figure as what your business is worth is selling you something. The honest output is a wide band, and the width is the point — it reflects how much depends on things arithmetic cannot see.

Use it to know roughly which conversation you are in, not to set a price. Before you actually sell, an accountant or a broker who has read the books will tell you something this cannot.