Business Valuation Calculator

This estimates what a small business might be worth using two named methods and keeps them apart. The first rebuilds seller discretionary earnings from profit, the owner pay, the owner perks, interest, depreciation and genuinely one-off costs, then applies a low and a high multiple. The second discounts the cash the business produces year by year, adds a terminal value, and prints how much of the answer rests on that one assumption. Both come back as ranges, because the multiple and the discount rate carry most of the uncertainty, and neither method has seen your books; a real valuation needs a professional who has.

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The method most small businesses are actually sold on: rebuild what the owner really earns, then apply a range of multiples.

Straight off the profit and loss, before tax. A loss goes in with a minus sign.
One working owner only. Pay to a second owner or to family doing a real job stays as a cost.
Vehicle, phone, travel, insurance and the rest, only where a buyer would not have to keep paying it.
A lawsuit, a flood, a move. A buyer will challenge anything here that looks like a normal cost of trading.
Only used to show the margin and a revenue multiple as a cross-check.
Most owner-operated businesses trade between about 2 and 3.5 times SDE. Higher goes to businesses that run without the owner, with recurring revenue and clean books.
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Projects the cash the business produces, discounts it back to today, and shows how much of the answer rests on the years you cannot see.

Cash left after paying a market wage to whoever does the owner job. Putting SDE in here, with the owner pay added back, overstates the answer.
The return a buyer wants for taking the risk. Small private businesses are usually discounted somewhere between 15 and 30 percent.
Forever, so it has to be modest. Anything near the discount rate makes the terminal value explode.
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