Business Valuation Calculator

Enter a year of revenue and expenses, the wage you paid yourself and anything personal that ran through the books. You get the earnings a buyer would look at, and the range your own multiple puts on them.

Revenue for the year

Everything the business billed in the last twelve months, before tax.

Operating expenses for the year

What it cost to run the business over the same twelve months, including any wages you paid other people.

What you paid yourself

Your own wage or draw for the year, if it sits inside the expenses above. A buyer decides for themselves what to pay an owner, so it comes back out.

Personal or one-time costs you paid from the business

These are called add-backs, because they get added back to your earnings. A truck bought for the family, a holiday on the company card, a legal bill that will not happen again. Only put in costs the next owner would not have. Type 0 if there are none.

How many times the yearly earnings (the multiple)

A buyer pays your yearly earnings multiplied by this number. Ask a business broker or your accountant, or find a business like yours that sold recently. It changes with your trade, your size, and how much the work depends on you personally. We do not fill it in for you.

Result

Fill in a few more boxes and the answer will show here.

Opens your print dialog. Choose Save as PDF. Your figures stay on this device.

Loading the calculator.

This is an estimate for planning, not a valuation, an appraisal or an opinion of value. Before you act on a sale, a purchase, a buy-in, a buy-out, an estate or a tax position, get a valuation from a qualified professional in your market.

What a trade business is actually valued on

Seller's discretionary earnings is what the business puts in one owner's pocket over a year. Take the revenue, take off what it cost to run, then add back the wage you paid yourself and any one-off or personal cost that went through the books. What is left is what a buyer would have to work with standing where you stand.

The multiple is the part no calculator should hand you. It comes from a broker, from a business like yours that recently sold, or from an accountant who has seen real sale prices. It moves with the trade, with size, with how clean the books are, and above all with how much of the work depends on you personally. Enter a low one and a high one and read the answer as a range, because a range is what an offer looks like.

Read the earnings before you read the valuation. A large revenue turning into thin earnings means the multiple is magnifying a small number. Read the wage share as well: if nearly all the earnings are what you paid yourself, what is for sale is closer to a job than a business.

The common mistake is adding back everything. A truck you genuinely need next year is a cost, not an add-back. Only put back what the next owner would not carry, and be ready to show it. Zeus keeps invoices, payments and expenses attached to the jobs they came from, so the revenue and cost figures you type here come off your own records instead of memory.

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