Assuming you have all of the information to hand that you need to complete the questionnaire (more on that later) it should take no more than 15 minutes to complete.

We aim to complete the valuation within two working days. One of our consultants will manually review your entries to ensure accuracy. During busy times, it may take a little longer, and we may contact you if anything needs clarification.

Most of the information will come from your full year end accounts, that would have been sent to you from your accountants. You will need the details from the last two years, along with details of your client concentration, Directors pay and benefits and Senior Leadership Team details.

As part of the valuation process we need to understand how much of your income comes from your biggest clients. For example if you have £1M in revenue and your biggest client is £300k, the client concentration for this client is 30%. For businesses with significant pass-through costs, please exclude these from the calculation when assessing client concentration in relation to the account.

If you are paying yourself a mix of salary and dividends as part of your remuneration we need the details as reflected in your P&L account. Director salary is fairly obvious, but for benefits, you may have to add together, pension contributions, life cover, health insurance, cost of company cars etc, to get the figure you need. We also need to understand the market rate salaries to identify the cost to replace you should you leave the business.

We would define senior leadership as a group of people who can genuinely run the business in your absence. It probably consists of the following roles: Finance Manager/Director; Marketing Manager/Director; Client Service Director; Delivery Director; Talent & Culture Manager/Director. Having these people in place adds value to the business. But we understand that the Agency needs to be a certain size and above to be able to afford these salaries.

In your last two years of fully signed accounts, you'll find the Operating Profit listed within the main Profit and Loss statement, typically a few pages in. Look for the comparative column, which will also display the previous year’s Operating Profit for easy reference.

Complete the questionnaire as best you can and make a note in the comments box at the end of the points you need to clarify and we’ll do our best to help. Please bear with us though! This is a free tool and not a formal valuation process.

The data you share through the Valuation Tool will be stored securely and kept confidential. Bluhalo IO will never disclose the information shared to any other parties and will not use any of the information in any way except to provide you with an indicative valuation for your business.