Your working
Each question is worth a stated number of points, and each answer is worth a quarter, half, three-quarters or all of them. The six areas are weighted by how much they move a deal, not equally — owner dependency is worth 25 points and your reason for selling is worth 10.
| Area | Question | Your answer | Score |
|---|
Fix these first
Ordered by the points you are losing, so the top of the list is where the effort pays back most.
Send me this result
We'll email your scorecard and fix list back to you, with a note on the order we would tackle them in and how long each realistically takes for a firm your size. No obligation, NDA on request.
How the scorecard is weighted, and why
Readiness is not the same as value. A firm can be worth a decent multiple and still be a nightmare to buy; another can be modest but so well organised that a deal completes in weeks. What a buyer is really testing is whether the income you are describing will still exist once you have gone, and whether the evidence for that exists in documents rather than in your head. The six areas below are weighted by how much they change the answer to that question.
| Area | Points | Why it carries that weight |
|---|---|---|
| Owner dependency | 25 | The largest single driver of both price and structure. If the firm is you, the buyer is purchasing an introduction, not a business. |
| Client base & concentration | 20 | Determines how much damage a single departure does, and how much of the income genuinely repeats. |
| Documented systems | 15 | Decides whether the work can be picked up by someone else, and how painful the integration will be. |
| Staff & retention | 15 | Your team hold relationships and knowledge. A walk-out after completion is the buyer's worst case. |
| Financial records | 15 | Slow or messy information stretches diligence, and everything a buyer cannot verify gets discounted. |
| Reason & timing | 10 | Unclear motives predict abandoned processes. Buyers price certainty of completion, not just fees. |
What the bands mean
| Score | Band | What it means for a deal today |
|---|---|---|
| 80–100 | Market ready | You could open a conversation now. Expect a straightforward process, a higher proportion of the consideration in cash on completion, and a shorter diligence period. |
| 60–79 | Close | A deal is very doable, with specific gaps a buyer will price. Six to twelve months of focused work would move you into the top band. |
| 40–59 | Getting there | Sellable, but at a discount and with more of the money deferred or linked to client retention. Twelve to eighteen months of work would pay for itself several times over. |
| 0–39 | Not yet | Going to market now means selling at the bottom of the range and carrying most of the risk yourself. Unless the timing is forced, fix the top three items first. |
Worked example
A two-partner firm scores: owner dependency 2 and 2 out of 4 (12 × 0.5 = 6.0 and 13 × 0.5 = 6.5), documented systems 1 and 2 (8 × 0.25 = 2.0 and 7 × 0.5 = 3.5), staff 3 and 3 (8 × 0.75 = 6.0 and 7 × 0.75 = 5.25), client base 1 and 3 (10 × 0.25 = 2.5 and 10 × 0.75 = 7.5), financial records 3 and 2 (8 × 0.75 = 6.0 and 7 × 0.5 = 3.5), reason and timing 4 and 3 (5 × 1 = 5.0 and 5 × 0.75 = 3.75).
Total: 6.0 + 6.5 + 2.0 + 3.5 + 6.0 + 5.25 + 2.5 + 7.5 + 6.0 + 3.5 + 5.0 + 3.75 = 57.5, rounded to 58 — the "getting there" band. Ranked by points lost, the fix list comes out as client concentration (7.5 lost), clients who would deal with someone else (6.5), running for a month without the owner (6.0), documentation (6.0), then management accounts and job tracking (3.5 each). Owner dependency is the largest single hole at 12.5 points across its two questions, even though neither one tops the list on its own.
What a buyer does with this in practice
Nobody hands you a scorecard in a real transaction. What happens instead is that each weak area turns into a specific term in the deal. Heavy owner dependency becomes a longer tie-in and a bigger slice of the money linked to clients staying. Poor documentation becomes a longer, more intrusive diligence process. Client concentration becomes a specific clause about what happens if a named client leaves within a year. Slow financial information becomes delay, and delay in a sale process is where deals quietly die.
That is the practical case for scoring yourself early. Every point you add before you go to market is a term you do not have to argue about later, and negotiating leverage is far easier to build in the eighteen months before a process than during one. It is also worth saying plainly that the two things owners most often assume will impress a buyer — long client loyalty and a reputation built on the owner personally — are read by buyers as risk, not reassurance, unless the relationships have been genuinely shared with the team.
Frequently asked questions
What does "ready to sell" actually mean for an accountancy practice?
It means a buyer can look at your firm and see fee income that will survive your departure, evidenced by documents rather than by your word. In practice that comes down to six things: how much rests on you, whether the work is documented, whether the team will stay, how concentrated the client base is, whether the numbers can be produced quickly and cleanly, and whether you are clear about why you are selling. This scorecard weights those six areas to 100 points.
Does a low score mean I cannot sell?
No. Practices sell at every score. A low score means the price will be lower and more of it will be deferred or contingent on clients staying, because the buyer is carrying more risk. The value of scoring yourself is that most of the gap between a low score and a high one is fixable in 12 to 24 months, and it is worth far more than the effort costs.
How long before a sale should I start fixing these things?
Twelve to twenty-four months for the items that matter most. Access, documentation and a clean fee analysis can be done in weeks. Moving client relationships to a second person takes a full annual cycle. Reducing client concentration and building recurring income take longest, because they depend on winning new work rather than reorganising existing work.
Why does my reason for selling affect readiness?
Because a buyer will ask, and an unclear answer creates doubt about whether the sale will actually complete. Owners who cannot say plainly why they are selling, or what they want to do afterwards, frequently withdraw part-way through a process. That wasted time is a real cost for a buyer, so a clear, settled reason genuinely makes a firm easier to transact with.
Is the scorecard the same thing as a valuation?
No. The scorecard measures how ready the firm is to transact; the valuation calculator estimates what it is worth. They overlap — owner dependency and client concentration appear in both — but a firm can be worth a good multiple and still be badly prepared, and vice versa. Use the scorecard to decide what to fix and the valuation calculator to see what fixing it is worth.
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