Should I Buy This Business?

Businesses are sold on the seller's story. The number that matters is different: what the business earns a new owner after the seller's spouse stops doing the books for free, after a market wage for the job you are actually buying yourself, and after the loan payments the seller never had. In the worked example, an $89,000 gap sits between those two numbers. Most first-time buyers find that gap after closing. This workbook makes you find it before you make an offer.

How it works

• Normalise the tax-return profit into SDE, add-back by add-back — with the rule that an add-back without a receipt does not exist
• Subtract what the story leaves out: your market wage, the unpaid family labor, the below-market rent that ends at closing
• Build the year-one cash flow a lender will build: capex reserve, a revenue-fade assumption for customers loyal to the seller, both loan payments
• Get the two verdict numbers — DSCR (the bank's yes/no) and cash-on-cash on your down payment
• Score eight risk factors into a defensible multiple range and compare it with the ask
• Solve exactly for your maximum price — the number above which the deal fails your own coverage floor
• Walk into diligence with the twelve documents to demand and the five questions that kill bad deals

Built for

First-time business buyers · searchers and acquisition entrepreneurs · owners buying a competitor · anyone reading BizBuySell listings and wondering which numbers to believe.

What you get

One .xlsx file, seven tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription. Every threshold — DSCR floor, multiple calibration, fade rate — is visible and editable.