The Valuation section

What the Valuation section is

Valuation answers two questions an owner asks long before a buyer does: what is this business worth today, and what moves that number? It reads the profit and loss you already sent, places your trailing-year earnings against the multiples published for restoration businesses your size, and shows the result as a range, never a single figure. It then prices the levers that move the range, and lays out the checks a buyer runs before agreeing to a multiple.

Three guardrails shape everything on the page. The answer is always a range, with the basis named on its face. The multiple is published by named sources, never Verinode's own opinion of what your business would fetch. And the parts of the picture no export can hold, such as whether the business runs without you, are asked of you directly and labeled as your answers.

Because the page opens on your profit and loss and is refined when a balance sheet lands, it stays current between year-end statements. An empty Valuation page means the statements have not flowed in yet.

Where to find it

Open Valuation from the sidebar, under Finance, beside Margin, Cash, Callbacks, and Forecasting. The page lives at iq.verinode.ai/valuation. The header reads Valuation with an Add Data button, and three tabs: Cockpit, Analytics, and All Multiples.

Cockpit: what it is worth

The instrument at the top has the eyebrow What it is worth, followed by your earnings tier: Owner-Operated, Regional, or Platform. The tier is set by the size of your trailing earnings, and each tier has its own published range.

• The large figure is the range: your earnings times the low and the high of the published range for your tier.
• Beside it, a smaller figure names where the multiple you have chosen sits inside that range, such as "$2.1M at 4.5x", meaning your earnings at the multiple you chose. That position is an assumption you set, not the answer.
• A track draws the published range with your multiple as a marker on it.
• The standing line reads "Trailing-year earnings of $460,000, times what restoration businesses this size are published to trade at."
• The scope line names the months the earnings cover, says when they were annualized from a shorter run of books, and links to the Methodology.

Before a profit and loss is on file, the instrument shows an empty track and reads "A profit & loss turns this on, and with it the range: trailing earnings times what businesses your size trade at."

The bridge: earnings and what you would keep

Directly under the instrument, a band explains why the range can be believed:

• Earnings is the figure the range rests on: net income, plus depreciation and amortization when your statements carry it, plus any normalization, each add-back named on its own line.
• After Debt is the enterprise range less debt plus cash on your latest balance sheet: what you as owner would keep. It names the debt, the cash, and the month of the sheet. Without a balance sheet it reads "A balance sheet puts what you would keep after debt here."
• Inside The Range appears when you hold a share of another entity, naming your share of its earnings so it is never folded in silently.
• Rolling Year draws the twelve months of earnings behind each month end, priced at your multiple. It needs monthly books.

Entities you hold apart from the operating business, such as a company that owns the building, are drawn separately in the same band, with whether their property comes with the business.

What Moves It

The same band ends with What Moves It: three levers, each priced in dollars over the trailing year.

• One Point Of Margin, of value at the multiple. It links to Margin.
• Ten Percent More Work, of value at the multiple. It links to Jobs.
• Ten Days Faster Collection, of cash, once. It is drawn apart and reads "Of cash, once; the multiple does not move", because collecting faster releases cash but does not change what the business earns.

Where the normalization adds back part of what an affiliate charges the business, that add-back appears as its own lever too. Before a profit and loss lands, the levers show empty outlines and the line "A profit and loss statement prices these: a point of margin, ten percent more work, ten days faster collection, each in dollars."

Analytics: the facts behind the range

The Analytics tab opens on an Explore row of fact tiles, each a single dimension of the range:

• What a Buyer Asks For, the company documents a buyer, a lender, or an insurer asks for, gathered before they ask.
• Earnings, your trailing earnings, marked "Annualized, Trailing Books" when the window is short of a year.
• The Multiple, the multiple you have set, with your tier and its published range beneath it. It opens Industry Data. The multiple operators like you actually sold at is not shown yet; it appears as more operators contribute, and it is not about anything missing from your data.
• After Debt, the figure at your multiple less net debt, or "Needs A Balance Sheet".
• Largest Payer, the largest payer's share of what is owed to you. A peer comparison appears beside it once your benchmark consent is on and a cohort is available. It opens Clients.
• Margin Point, what one point of margin is worth at your multiple. It opens Margin.

Under the tiles, a books hygiene card lists the defects a buyer's accountant tends to find first, for example Depreciation Stopped Moving, One Person, Two Spellings on the roster, or Job Numbers In More Than One Shape, each with what closes it. When none is found it reads "Reads clean".

Sale Readiness

The last row on Analytics is Apps, with one launcher: Sale Readiness, "Your multiple, and what a buyer checks before it." Its tile shows where you stand, in the form "9 of 14 checks met."

It runs in two steps. On the set-up screen you pick the date the books are read as of, set your multiple (a slider that stays inside the published range for your tier and starts at its middle), and answer the questions only you can answer as dropdowns and fields, each saving itself when you leave it. Run the checks draws the result: your multiple on the published track, a Sale readiness ring and count, and a numbered checklist in four groups, The books, The customers, The operation, and Assets and obligations. Each check is marked met or open and labeled with what closes it:

• Document: a statement closes it, and the check links to the section where that document lives.
• Data: it fills in as your records build.
• Your input: only you can answer it, with a yes or no, a choice, or a dollar figure on the set-up screen, and the checklist prints your answer beside the check. These are the questions a buyer asks that no export can hold.

The checks include A Clean Year Of Books, A Balance Sheet, Revenue Holding Or Growing, Owner Pay Normalized (or One-Time Items, depending on how you are paid), No Payer Above A Quarter, Receivables Collected In Time, Relationships Held By The Team, Documented Systems, Runs Without The Owner, A Second In Command, Premises Secured, Licenses Held By The Business, Warranty Reserve Covers The Callbacks, and No Open Claims Or Liens. Where your legal setup raises them, a few more appear, such as a manager's pay for your seat or the arm's-length rate on rent an affiliate charges. A blank answer is never read as a zero; an unanswered question stays "Not answered".

The app's Export tab creates a PDF of the checklist with a cover and the date. It downloads and keeps a copy in your Vault.

All Multiples: where the range comes from

All Multiples is the provenance of the page's most trust-sensitive number: every published range the band is built from, one row per publisher and tier, with Tier, Multiple, For whom, and Published. It opens on your own tier, with Every published range one click away. Each range is the publisher's own figure for restoration businesses of that size, not a number Verinode derived.

What fills the section

1. 1A profit and loss turns on the range: trailing earnings times what businesses your size trade at, and with it the levers.
2. 2A balance sheet adds what you would keep after debt, and several of the readiness checks.
3. 3Your company documents gather the paper a buyer asks for before they ask.

Send them through Add Data; see adding data. When you are ready to share your numbers with a named buyer, that happens in Diligence, not here.

Ask IQ about valuation

IQ has a specialist for Valuation that reads the same range, levers, and readiness checks this page draws. Ask it "what would one point of margin add to the range?" or "which readiness checks can I close this quarter?" and it answers from your own books and answers. Callbacks feed one of the checks; see the Callbacks section.

Data sources