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Our 5 Stage Success Journey
The full process, from compliance and foundations through to exit planning, and what each stage actually delivers. Exit planning is stage five, and it works because of everything underneath it.
- 01 Compliance and Foundations
- 02 Tech Advisory
- 03 Business Advisory
- 04 Tax Advisory
- 05 Exit Planning
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Sectors
Who we help
- Retail & Ecommerce
- Technology
- Manufacturing
- Hospitality
- Influencers & Content Creators
- Transport & Logistics
- Creative & Marketing Agencies
- Healthcare
- Construction & Property
- Tradespeople
- Financial Services
- Gaming & Gambling
- Fitness & Wellbeing
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Business exit planning services prepare a company for sale, succession or transfer so that it achieves the highest possible value. They typically cover financial reporting, systems and technology, operational performance, management structure, tax position and deal structure. The work is done in advance of a sale rather than during one, because most of the factors that determine your price cannot be changed once you are already in negotiation.
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Ideally three to five years before you intend to sell, and there is no real downside to starting earlier. Reducing owner dependency, building reliable management information and putting the right tax structure in place all take time, and several tax reliefs carry conditions that must be satisfied for a period before a disposal. Owners who start twelve months out are usually limited to presenting the business well rather than genuinely improving it.
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An exit planning accountant prepares your business and your personal tax position for a sale. That includes assessing readiness through a buyer's lens, improving the quality and reliability of financial information, identifying and closing the gaps that reduce valuation, structuring the company and shareholdings efficiently, and advising on which exit route delivers the best outcome. A good exit planning adviser works alongside your solicitor and, where relevant, your broker, rather than replacing them.
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Most businesses need two to five years to become genuinely exit ready, depending on the starting point. Compliance and reporting can be fixed relatively quickly. Reducing owner dependency, building a management team and improving margins take considerably longer, because they involve changing how the business actually operates rather than how it is presented.
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An exit readiness scorecard is a structured assessment that scores a business across the areas buyers examine during due diligence, such as financial reporting quality, owner dependency, systems, customer concentration and legal and compliance position. It gives an owner an objective view of where they stand and which weaknesses would most damage their valuation. Ours takes a few minutes to complete and returns a breakdown by area rather than a single number.
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Most owner managed businesses are valued on a multiple of sustainable profit, adjusted for the risk a buyer perceives in the business. The multiple is where the real variation sits: two businesses with identical profits can attract very different multiples depending on owner dependency, customer concentration, quality of management information, contracted revenue and growth trajectory. Our business growth calculator gives you an indicative picture of where you stand today and what improvement is possible.
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Yes. Accountants handle valuation, tax structuring, financial due diligence and deal structure. Solicitors handle share purchase agreements, warranties, indemnities, disclosure and the legal transfer itself. The two need to work together from an early stage, because tax planning drives structure and legal drafting protects it. Problems arise when the two are appointed at different times and never speak directly.
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The four most common routes are a trade sale to another company, a management buyout by your existing team, family succession, and a sale to an employee ownership trust. Each carries very different tax consequences, timescales, funding requirements and levels of certainty. Choosing the route before you optimise the structure is the wrong order, because the structure that suits one route can be actively unhelpful for another.
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Owner dependency. If the business relies on you for sales, key relationships, technical decisions or day to day operations, a buyer is not purchasing a business, they are purchasing a job with your name on it. That risk is priced in immediately, usually through a lower multiple, a larger deferred element, or a long earn out that keeps you working for years after the sale.
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It depends on the scope and on where your business is starting from. Some owners need support at a single stage. Others need the full journey from compliance through to sale. We assess what is actually required and quote accordingly, rather than applying a fixed package, and exit planning work is often delivered alongside our other services as part of an ongoing relationship. The starting point is a conversation about where your business is now.
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Yes, and this is one of the most common situations we see. Compliance only accountancy is not a failing, but it will not prepare a business for sale, because it looks backwards at what happened rather than forwards at what needs to change. We regularly take on businesses where the filings are perfectly in order but nobody has ever assessed the business through a buyer's eyes.