Whether your company is expanding or going through a downturn, being purchased or sold, audited or invested in, refinanced or liquidated, it is important to understand the real market value of your business for you, your partners, employees and key third parties involved with your operation.

Obtaining a business valuation from a qualified appraisal firm such as Business Valuation Specialists can provide you with firsthand knowledge of the value of your company and what to expect should you wish to buy, sell, refinance or bring in new investors. A formal appraisal analysis and report can assist you in any number of ways as you move through the next phases of your company’s development and can be shared with third parties who may be assisting you with these project plans.

We will work closely with you to determine the critical information needed to complete the valuation analysis and answer any questions you may regarding the process. The experienced, certified appraisers at Business Valuation Specialists are ready to discuss the next steps with you. We look forward to the opportunity to work with you and your business as a key component to your ongoing business projects.

How Does Valuation Consulting with Accounting Firms Work?

Let's start by taking a look at the differences between certified business appraisers and accounting firms. Accounting firms provide ongoing support to companies in terms of bookkeeping and financial records, including required reporting. This gives the business an easy way to quickly determine where the business is at the moment, but doesn't tend to provide deeper details about how the company is running in terms of efficiency and operations. By comparison, a business valuation takes an in-depth look at how the company is doing at a specific moment in time, not only in terms of finances, but also in terms of market demand, operational efficiency, financial issues such as boom years or high expenses, projected future income and a wide range of other variables that you won't find in most accounting documents.

Though many business owners choose to limit their use of business valuations to points when a business is being bought or sold, it does have value in a range of other circumstances. When faced with an IRS audit or if you're turning in tax paperwork that is more likely to be audited, having a valuation consultation on your business helps ensure that everything is ready to go before the process. Similarly, before financial filings are made, having a business appraiser look over the business value with your accounting firm helps ensure that no mistakes are made and that your company is properly valued in the filing process.

In some situations, a company's accounting firm may need to work directly with a business appraiser to ensure that the appraisal data is conforming to the accounting and tax requirements of the business' specific structure and organization. As with any business valuation, there is a period once the valuation report has been completed during which a thorough review allows for amendments to be made to the report, if specific issues arise, but for the most part, working directly with the accounting firm or department helps eliminate many of these issues before they arise, which is why they are more common during consultations due to the complexity of finalizing financial statements or working with tax agencies.

By having a better idea of what happens when valuation consulting with accounting firms needs to happen to sort out a specific tax or financial situation, you'll be better able to deal with any questions that may arise during the process. However, it's important to make sure that your accounting firm is working with a certified business appraiser in these situations. This is because a certified appraiser has gone through specific training to ensure that they're using time-tested methodologies in their calculations. These methodologies have been used in a wide range of circumstances, including financial and tax agency situations, which helps ensure that you'll get a proper accounting of your business value.

When your business is keeping the power on for your customers, the value of your electric utility company may not seem important. However, that value can make a huge difference in how easily you can grow your business, whether it's through a merger or simple expansion as your region becomes more populated. But how do you determine the overall value of your utility? An electric utility company appraisal can go a long way to giving you a solid grasp of your business' value. Here's what happens in the process.

How Does an Electric Utility Company Appraisal Take Place?

Let's start by taking a look at the kind of factors that can impact your electric utility's value. How many of your customers pay on time with their payments versus those who are behind? This can have a strong impact on your cash flow. What's the size of your customer base and is it growing or shrinking? If the population in your area is growing, you may end up seeing more apartment and commercial customers, which can grow your business. What condition are your utility's assets in? If you replaced all of your transformers in the past few years following a major disaster, they'll have a higher value than those that will need to be replaced soon.

This information is among the data that a certified business appraiser will consider when they're calculating the estimated value of your electric utility company. They'll take this kind of information into account, as well as looking at your company's financial state, competition and similar factors that can impact your ability to compete in the market.

To start, the appraiser will gather information about why you need the appraisal performed and your finances. This allows them to determine the best methodology to use in your circumstances. In many situations, there are legal precedents that require the appraiser to follow a specific method when calculating your company's business. As they look at your finances, they'll look for unusual transactions, such as the huge expenses you had the year that the hurricane wiped out 90% of your infrastructure or the year you gained several large box stores as customers who paid for their own infrastructure upgrades.

Once the finances have been sorted, the appraiser will look at the competition, local market and expected future changes to your business to help estimate the value. They may also look at information from publicly-traded electric utility companies that have similar revenue, receipts or transactions to yours to determine value. Income can be projected out into the future to calculate value as well. In almost all situations, the value of an electric utility company is more than the simple value of its assets.

How is a Private Medical Practice Valuation Different From Other Business Valuations?

There are a number of factors that impact your private medical practice's overall value. To start, what is your company's reputation in the community? If your business has a reputation for exceptional patient care, unique approaches to treatment or being able to provide at-home care for patients, these types of factors can greatly increase your company's bottom line. Why? This type of treatment is often sought out by those who want to make sure their family is well-cared for, to seek out treatments that are not commonly offered or to avoid having to move a sick child to have an evaluation and treatment plan developed.

What about the people who make your private medical practice exceptional? If you have top-performing doctors and nurses, you'll often have a larger following and will have people flock to your practice to receive treatment from these individuals. By comparison, if you have poorly-performing staff, patients may be reluctant to seek treatment at your facility, lowering your company's overall value due to lower demand.

Are you in a rural or urban area? Specialist medical practices in urban areas are often worth more than a general practice in a rural area, partially due to the availability of local patients as well as the demand for specialty treatments. However, many rural private medical practices have lower expenses and may have a devoted following, especially if the main practitioners have been a part of the community for many years.

How up-to-date are your practice's assets? If you have out-of-date equipment or are unable to keep up with changes in technology due to budgetary constraints, patients may seek care elsewhere to receive more exacting imaging and test results. However, if the race to have the latest and greatest equipment has put your practice into debt, that may result in a lower overall business value.

When your business involves the great outdoors, planting and nurturing the earth in a landscaping company, the value of your business may seem ambiguous at best. How do you determine the value of your company? A landscaping business appraisal can help, but to fully understand the appraisal report you'll receive it's important to understand the different approaches to appraising your landscaping company. Here's a quick summary to help get you started.

What Are My Options During a Landscaping Business Appraisal?

Asset-Based Appraisal

An asset-based appraisal looks specifically at the value of your company's assets: lawnmowers, real estate, vehicles and similar assets. It's based on the idea that a smart buyer will only pay what the company's assets are worth, but it misses out on a lot of other areas, such as the goodwill you've developed in the community, future income or the market value of your business. This is why this type of appraisal is usually only used by companies that are failing or facing insolvency, because a business outside of these conditions will have some additional value that needs to be carefully considered during a sale, transfer or merger.

Income-Based Appraisal

Because so much of your company's income is based on the services you provide, an income-based appraisal may make a lot more sense for your business. This type of approach looks at your company's income for the past several years and projects it out into the future. At that point, the value of your future business income is estimated to help determine the company's value. This approach uses a couple of different methods, one of which, capitalization of earnings, is based on regular income and the other, discounted earnings, which is based on irregular income or business growth. In either situation, the appraiser will take into account any unusually high income or expenses, such as a large project or replacing an unusually high amount of equipment, and will provide a journal adjustment entry to normalize the unusual income or expense.

Market-Based Appraisal

If your business has been very successful in the recent past and there's a lot of demand for your company's services well into the future, an interested buyer may be willing to pay more because of anticipated high future growth. This market-based approach can use a wide range of factors, but will often base the value on a similar publicly-traded company's value. Because publicly-traded businesses have to file financial information, it's easy for the appraiser to match your company's transactions, discretionary earnings or revenue multiples to one of these companies and then make small adjustments to the figures to reflect your privately-held company's expected market value. This substitution provides solid, publicly-available information to back up the estamted value of your business.

By understanding the approaches used in a landscaping business appraisal, you can make better use of the information you'll find in the appraisal report provided to you by your appraiser. However, it's important to only work with a certified business appraiser, who can provide you with an estimate of value for your company that is based on sound, time-tested appraisal practices and methodologies. Make sure to ask your appraiser about their certification, because a certified business appraiser will always be happy to discuss these details with you.

Whether you're creating an intentional community for families or an independent living apartment complex, knowing the value of your community can help you leverage that value for future expansions and improvements in your business. But how exactly do you calculate the value of your community? One way to get an accurate estimate of your community's value is through a congregate living business appraisal. But how does this type of business valuation work and what are the benefits you'll realize at the end of the process? Here's a quick look at how the overall process will go.

How Does a Congregate Living Business Appraisal Work?

As our world gets more and more connected, many people yearn for community and strong neighborhoods, while retiring seniors want a home where they can still enjoy their independence without feeling alone. Though many people focus on the congregate living community, the business behind it is just as important, with a great deal of forethought going into planning and activities to keep the community at the heart of the business thriving.

Knowing the financial value of that community provides your business with a basis for securing financing when it's time to expand, to fight bad tax assessments, to prove value for insurance claims and a wide range of other situations. It makes it easier to make smart decisions when you're considering making expansions to your community or getting into a different business model. The information helps you find places to improve your business, making it easier to make intelligent changes to your business.

The certified business appraiser will go over your company's finances, look at competitors, consider market forces and a wide range of other information to determine the overall value for your business. This information all feeds into a series of complex calculations that will arrive at a fair and accurate value of your business. An independent certified business appraiser will utilize accepted methodologies and approaches to value your business, whether the purpose is for potential purchase/sale, insurance, legal, financial or tax situations. The estimated value is supportable and will stand up to scrutiny.

Once this information has been fed into the appraiser's formulas, the research and analysis completed by the appraiser is then summarized in a certified report which can be presented to any third parties involved in the ongoing transaction as a supportable independent document. You can use the data within the report to spot areas where your business model is soft, where your community could be improved and a range of other purposes to help you build and grow your company. Many business owners use insights found within a business appraisal report for this purpose.

By understanding how a congregate living business appraisal works, you can get a better grasp on the overall value of your community, providing you with a solid tool for growth, improvement and expansion. However, it's of vital importance that you only work with a certified business appraiser through the process. By doing so, the valuation report you'll receive will have an estimated value that was calculated using standardized methodologies, providing you with a solid starting point for your business' future growth.

When you spend your work life in the creative process, surrounded by mixers, musicians, sound and instrumentation, the value of your business may be the furthest thing from your mind. But that value can make a huge difference to your taxes, prospects for future financing, insurance claims and similar areas of interest. One of the easiest ways to prove that value is through a business valuation. But what happens during the appraisal of recording company business values? Here's a quick look at the inside track on how this process happens.

How Does the Appraisal of a Recording Company Business Work?

Like many industries, the recording industry can have its ups and downs that can impact an individual business' value, as well as a wide range of other aspects that impact value. For that reason, it's of vital importance that you work with an experienced professsional business appraiser who understands the nuances of your industry and its related values. This ensures that they're taking more into account than the simple value of your equipment, property and other business assets, to include income potential, market forces and similar aspect.

The business appraiser will start by gathering some basic information on your business. This may include the type of work you do with the community at large that can build intangible assets, such as goodwill. They may ask about your competitors and areas where your business stands out in the market. Once they've gathered some basic information, they'll continue to do research on your company.

Next, they'll look over your company's finances. Do you have a lot of bad debt that could be handled otherwise? Did you have a really huge project or huge investment one year that is throwing off the income projections for surrounding years that will require an adjustment? The business valuation specialist will look at this information and provide you with a journal adjustment, if necessary, to normalize income around those types of events.

Your company's position in the marketplace also requires some level of consideration. Do you have a reputation for being absolutely stellar at specific types of music or recording? Do you have people on staff who bring in business due to their fame, experience or expertise? Have you developed certain techniques to improve the recording process and limit studio time? Any of these aspects can impact your company's overall value and should be taken into consideration during the process.

When you work with pet products in a chain store as your business, you're probably focused on market trends, issues with suppliers and ensuring top-quality products for your customers. But have you thought about what's involved when appraising a pet products store chain? There are several aspects of your business that you may not have considered important that are actually vital to the appraisal process. Here's a quick look at what factors are considered when your pet products store chain is being appraised.

What's Considered When Appraising a Pet Products Store Chain?

• Finances. What shape are your business' finances in? Are you bringing in plenty of money with a good rate of profitability? Are you struggling to make ends meet in some areas? Have you had good years and bad years? A business valuation specialist will look at all of this information and determine whether journal adjustments need to be made to normalize unusual activity or show a more steady income stream.
• Market. Is your part of the market expanding or shrinking? If you've specialized in a specific type of animal that are declining or increasing in popularity, that change in the market will be reflected in your business' value. If you provide more generalized products for pets that cover a wider range of species, you may find you're more insulated from market conditions.
• Income. Do you have steady income or does it fluctuate seasonally? If you specialize in equipment for hunting dogs, for example, you may have peaks just before hunting season to account for. An accredited business valuation specialist will know how to account for changes in income, with several methods to help project income into the future as one means of determining business value.
• Specialization. Is your business known for innovative advances, such as developing pet products that cater to animals with health conditions? Or are you just one of many businesses that do the same basic thing as everyone else, making it hard to stand out from the crowd? Being a leader with a known brand in the pet community can have a big impact on your company's value.
• Goodwill. Do you regular provide free products to charitable organizations, such as paying for training for service animals, providing food and toys to animal shelters or helping low-income families keep their pets while going through hard times? Whatever your specific area is, these type of actions build goodwill in your business, increasing your business' market share with intangible assets that must be accounted for.

By having a better grasp of the factors involved when appraising a pet products store chain, you can make better use of the appraisal report you'll receive at the end of the process. This puts you in a better position to make positive change in your business, whether it's ensuring a better sale price when you retire, getting a better deal when you need a business loan to open new locations, work with a tax agency that has incorrectly assessed your business' value and countless other situations. However, the appraisal report can only be used if it stands up to strong scrutiny, something which you're assured of when you work with an accredited business valuation specialist.

When you work with remote or renewable energy as a part of your business, have you considered how the process of valuing an alternative energy business actually works? You're asked for some amount of information, some of which may not seem to make sense at the time, then you're presented with a report that gives you an estimate of your business' value. We admit it's a bit mysterious. Here's a quick look at the inside process when an alternative energy company is valued.

What Happens When You're Valuing an Alternative Energy Business?

To start, the appraiser will ask some questions to get an idea about how your alternative energy business is situated in terms of income, finances, expenses and similar information. They may ask about competitors, your research and development process, as well as the specific operations of your company. Do you manufacture equipment? Install it? Help homeowners determine potential energy savings? This helps give them a baseline to start building an estimate of your company's value.

The appraiser will probably ask to see some number of years of financial data, often through financial statements and tax forms. If they notice that you had a year with high income or expenses, they may ask about that and prepare a journal adjustment for your books to normalize that bump in your otherwise smooth financial history. This allows them to accurately project your alternative energy business' income and expenses into the future without those figures being skewed by unusual activity.

The appraiser will work on their own to look at competing businesses and comparing them to your company. If you have higher levels of goodwill, brand recognition, excellence in alternative energy research and development and similar intangible assets, those will be taken into account, as will your market share, any areas where your business needs improvement and similar aspects of your company. This information helps the appraiser determine whether your business is growing or contracting in response to market pressures.

They will also take a look at similar alternative energy businesses that have recently sold which have sale data available. They'll specifically look for businesses that are similar to your company in terms of income, transactions and similar data. This information allows them to compare your business to a range of recent business sales that are similar to your company and adjust those sale prices to reflect your company's income, receipts or other financial data.

Once the appraiser has gathered all of this information, they'll begin calculating the value of your business. This estimate isn't carved in stone, however, and if you feel that the appraiser has missed something in their process, you have the opportunity to work with them to come to a better agreement or receive an explanation for why that figure was calculated in a particular fashion.

By having a better idea of what's involved in valuing an alternative energy business, you can quickly learn how to take advantage of the information provided in the valuation report to grow and strengthen your business' income and position in the market. When you're able to leverage this information to your company's advantage, you can make smarter decisions, maximizing your business' potential. However, it's important to work with an accredited business valuation specialist who understands the nuances of the science behind the calculations involved.

When you're involved in the operation of a casino, you probably know a lot about the odds, but do you know about your business' value? Valuing a casino hotel business can seem very complicated, but it actually works by following a number of standard appraisal practices and procedures. Here's a quick look at the process of casino hotel valuation and how having one completed can help you stay on top of your financial gambles, ensuring that you know your odds of success in growing your business, undertaking sale negotiations and a range of other circumstances.

Beating the Odds: Valuing a Casino Hotel Business

To start, a business valuation specialist is someone who understands how businesses work and have experience in appraising their value. The appraiser will look at your business' position in the market, what particular niches it fills, its income levels, its expenses, areas that make it unique in the industry and similar aspects that can help determine its overall value. Much of this information is gathered through financial documents, phone calls and research.

The appraiser will need to know the reason for the appraisal. Why? Because there's a big difference between a casino hotel that is being sold off for the value of its assets alone versus one that is being sold in good condition that generates a solid income every year versus one that is booming and the existing owner or management wants to get out of the game while times are good. In some circumstances, such as a divorce, the enterprise must be sold using a specific valuation calculation, such as fair market value.

This is among the reasons why your appraiser will take a solid look at your financial records. The year you had a fire and all of the machines and interior fittings needed to be replaced had a lot of unusual expenses. The year you had twice as many conventions than usual had an impact on that year's income. For this reason, the appraiser will make adjustment entries for your financial books to account for these unusual levels of activity, so that they can be normalized and fit into any income-based appraisal calculations.

Does your casino hotel have a solid reputation that needs to be taken into account? Certain casinos have become household names, and those names are worth something. Are you in an exceptional location that is driving business to your casino? That also helps boost your appraised value. Does the hotel offer a range of other services that impact value, such as a spa, water sports rentals, a kennel for pets or a fine-dining establishment? The business valuation specialist takes all of these assets into account when calculating your casino's value.

Valuing a casino hotel business can seem like a complicated process, but by understanding the calculations that go into it, you'll gain a much better understanding of your company's strengths, weaknesses and which risks are a good bet. By working with an accredited business valuation specialist, you'll receive a comprehensive business valuation report that provides you with a lot of information on your business, making it easier to make tough decisions without risking everything you've built.