Your timeline
| Phase | Window | What it covers |
|---|
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We'll email your dated timeline back to you, with a note on which phases matter most for a firm at your stage and what a realistic process looks like from your target date. No obligation, NDA on request.
How the plan is built
Every phase below sits at a fixed number of months before your target completion date. Change the date and the whole plan slides with it; change the route and phases are added, removed or stretched. Nothing is guessed at run time — the offsets are set out in full so you can shift them to suit your own firm.
| Phase | Months before completion | Why there |
|---|---|---|
| Lift the value drivers | 36 → 18 | Re-pricing, recurring share and client spread move over years, not months. If this window has gone, so has most of your ability to change the price. |
| Reduce owner dependency | 30 → 12 | Relationships transfer over a full annual cycle. Widened to 36 → 12 if the firm is highly dependent on you, narrowed to 18 → 9 if it is not. |
| Tax and structure checkpoint | 24 | Business Asset Disposal Relief needs its conditions met for the two years up to the sale, so restructuring decisions belong before this point. |
| Team and retention plan | 18 → 12 | Decide who is told, when, and what keeps them. Cheaper to agree early than to react to a resignation mid-process. |
| Clean the numbers | 15 → 9 | A buyer's first request is a fee analysis by client and service. Lock-up and debtors also take a couple of quarters to improve. |
| Assemble the data room | 12 → 9 | Engagement letters, PI history, leases, staff contracts, licences. Gathering it under time pressure is how diligence slips. |
| Open conversations | 9 → 6 | Approach buyers, or open the valuation and funding conversation with your team. Route-dependent. |
| Heads of terms | 6 → 4 | Price, structure, timetable, exclusivity and what is actually binding. |
| Due diligence and legals | 4 → 1 | The bulk of the work in the transaction itself, and where a well-prepared data room earns its keep. |
| Completion | 0 | Your target date. |
| Handover | 0 → 6 after | Client introductions and transfer of knowledge. Stretched to 24 months after if you are bringing in a partner and stepping back gradually. |
| Deferred consideration | 12 → 36 after | Where deferred or retention-linked payments typically fall due. Stretched to 60 months for a management buyout. |
Tax and statutory checkpoints
Two facts worth marking on any exit timeline, both from GOV.UK and both checked on 27 July 2026. They are signposts, not advice, and your own position needs proper attention from whoever handles your personal tax.
- Business Asset Disposal Relief has a two-year qualifying period. GOV.UK states that the qualifying conditions must apply "for at least 2 years up to the date you sell your business" (or your shares). Anything that could reset that clock — incorporating, changing your shareholding, admitting a partner, changing what the company does — belongs on the timeline more than two years before completion. Source: gov.uk/business-asset-disposal-relief.
- The BADR rate is 18% on qualifying disposals made on or after 6 April 2026 (it was 14% for disposals between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026, and 10% on or before 5 April 2025). Same source. Gains that do not qualify for BADR are charged at the main Capital Gains Tax rates — 24% for higher-rate taxpayers on assets other than residential property from 6 April 2026, with an annual exempt amount of £3,000 for 2026–27. Source: gov.uk/capital-gains-tax/rates.
This planner deliberately does no tax arithmetic. The interaction between an asset sale and a share sale, deferred consideration, earn-outs and your other income is genuinely complicated, and a calculator that pretended otherwise would be worse than useless. What it does do is put the two-year checkpoint on the calendar, because that is the deadline owners most often discover too late.
Why the long phases come first
The instinct when planning an exit is to start with the transaction — who to approach, what the paperwork looks like, how long the legals take. That part is the most visible and the least important. A sale process, run properly with a buyer who knows the sector, is a matter of months. What decides the outcome is everything in the two years before it, and almost all of that work has a long lead time for reasons that cannot be shortened by trying harder.
Client relationships transfer over an annual cycle because a client only genuinely moves across when they have sat through a real meeting with someone else and it went fine. There is one of those a year. Client concentration falls only by winning new work, which takes as long as it takes. A second reviewer or signatory may need recruiting, and a recruitment round plus a settling-in period is the best part of a year. None of it compresses. That is the argument for picking a date and working backwards, even if the date later moves.
The second reason to back-plan is that it exposes the choice you are actually making. An owner who wants out in eighteen months is not choosing between a good price and a great one; they are choosing between going to market as they are, or moving the date. Seeing the compressed phases on a calendar makes that trade-off explicit rather than a vague sense of being behind.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to sell an accountancy practice?
The transaction itself — first conversation to completion — is usually a matter of months rather than years, and a direct sale to a buyer who already knows the sector can be quicker than that. The long part is everything before it. Reducing owner dependency, lifting the recurring share of fees and broadening a concentrated client base take one to three years, and they are what determine the price you are negotiating from.
How far ahead should I start planning my exit?
Three years gives you room to do everything in sequence. Two years covers the work that changes the price. Twelve months covers preparation but not improvement — you go to market with the firm as it is. Under twelve months, the plan becomes about running a clean, quick process and choosing a buyer who can move, rather than about lifting value.
What if my target date is only a year away?
The planner will flag every phase that no longer fits and compress it to start immediately. That is a legitimate plan, but it changes the strategy: do the cheap, fast items — fee analysis, data room, systems access, a documented process for the main job types — be straightforward with a buyer about the rest, and expect a phased handover rather than a clean break.
Does a management buyout take longer than an external sale?
Usually yes, on both ends. Your successors need time to be ready and to arrange funding, which is why the planner adds a successor development and funding phase running from around 30 months out. Consideration is also typically spread over a longer period, because an internal team is frequently paying out of the firm's future profits rather than with external money on day one.
Is there a tax deadline I should plan around?
Business Asset Disposal Relief requires its qualifying conditions to have been met for at least two years up to the date you sell, so any restructuring that could reset that clock needs to happen well before the two-year mark. The planner marks that date on your timeline. BADR is charged at 18% on qualifying disposals made on or after 6 April 2026. Both points are from GOV.UK and are signposts only — take advice on your own position before acting.
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