Free Business Valuation Australia: How to Get One Without Booking a Consultation

Search for "business valuation Australia" and most of what you find is the same: professional advisory firms asking you to book a call. William Buck, RSM, KPMG, Grant Thornton. All of them gate entry behind a consultation — and all of them are primarily targeting businesses with $5 million or more in revenue.

If you're running a $500,000 to $5 million revenue business and you want to know what it's worth, those services weren't built for you. The consultation model doesn't pencil out for smaller exits, and the initial conversation often costs more than the actual valuation range is worth in dollar terms.

The good news: you don't need a consultant to get a useful valuation. You need to understand how the numbers work.

How Australian businesses are valued

The dominant valuation method for small and medium Australian businesses is the EBITDA multiple. EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation — it's a proxy for the cash the business generates before financing and accounting decisions.

The formula is simple:

Business value = Adjusted EBITDA × Industry multiple

The "adjusted" part is important. Buyers don't use your reported profit — they recalculate EBITDA to remove items that are specific to you as the owner rather than the business. That typically includes:

• Owner salary above market rate for the role you perform
• Personal expenses running through the business (vehicle, phone, travel)
• One-off costs that won't recur (legal disputes, fitout, redundancy)
• Related-party transactions at non-arm's-length rates

Once those are stripped out and the replacement cost is added back, you have adjusted EBITDA. That's the number buyers use to value your business.

Industry multiples in Australia

The multiple applied to your adjusted EBITDA reflects the risk and growth profile of your sector. Higher multiples go to businesses with recurring revenue, low owner-dependency, and strong growth. Lower multiples apply to cyclical, owner-dependent, or capital-intensive businesses.

Current typical ranges for Australian SMBs:

Industry	Typical EBITDA multiple	Key drivers
Technology / SaaS	4× – 8×	Recurring revenue, scalability, IP
Professional services	2× – 5×	Client retention, team depth, key-person risk
Healthcare / allied health	3× – 6×	Referral relationships, provider mix, billing systems
Manufacturing	2.5× – 5×	Customer concentration, IP/patents, capacity utilisation
Trade / construction	1.5× – 3×	Pipeline, contract security, owner-dependency
Retail	1.5× – 3×	Location, lease terms, online vs physical split
Hospitality / food service	1× – 2.5×	Location, lease tenure, owner hours required

These are ranges, not fixed numbers. Where you land within the range depends on specific factors — revenue growth trajectory, customer concentration, quality of management, whether the business runs without the owner, and current market conditions.

What lowers your multiple

Most SMB owners are surprised to learn their business is worth less than they expected. The gap between expectation and reality almost always comes from one or more of these factors:

Key-person dependency

If the business's revenue depends on your relationships, your skills, or your daily presence, a buyer discounts the purchase price to reflect the risk that revenue walks out the door with you. The most common and most damaging multiple-reducer.

Customer concentration

If your top three customers represent more than 40% of revenue, buyers treat this as a single-point-of-failure risk. Losing one customer materially changes the business — and buyers price that risk in.

No documented systems

A business that runs on the founder's institutional knowledge is harder and riskier to acquire. Documented processes, trained staff, and clear operational procedures increase the multiple. Their absence reduces it.

Short or uncertain lease

For businesses tied to a physical location, a lease expiring within 12 months of the sale creates risk. Buyers factor in whether they'll be able to renew on acceptable terms.

Inconsistent or unclear financials

Blended personal and business expenses, cash transactions, or management accounts that don't reconcile to tax returns create friction in due diligence and uncertainty in the buyer's mind. Both suppress the final price.

What a formal valuation costs — and when you actually need one

A formal business valuation from a registered valuer or accounting firm in Australia typically costs between $3,000 and $15,000, depending on the complexity of the business and the purpose of the report.

You need a formal valuation for:

• ATO disputes or tax planning (e.g., transferring shares to a trust)
• Shareholder disputes or partnership dissolution
• Court proceedings
• Stamp duty or conveyancing requirements
• Completing a transaction with a sophisticated or institutional buyer

You do not need a formal valuation for:

• Understanding whether now is a good time to sell
• Deciding whether your asking price is realistic
• Planning your exit 12–36 months in advance
• Initial conversations with potential buyers
• Working out what the business needs to be worth for your retirement to work

If you're at the planning stage, a useful companion to any valuation is the Seller Readiness Checklist — a structured 20-item assessment of the factors that influence where your business lands within its valuation range.

For planning purposes — which is where most business owners start — an indicative range is both sufficient and faster. The formal valuation comes later, once you're serious about transacting.

Why advisory firms gate everything behind a consultation

The consultation model exists for good reasons in some contexts: complex businesses, multi-stakeholder structures, and situations where nuance matters enough to justify the cost. For a family business navigating intergenerational transfer with competing siblings, a structured advisory process is the right tool.

For a founder running a $1.5 million revenue trade business who wants to know if they can afford to retire in three years, it's not. The consultation fee and time commitment are disproportionate to what the founder actually needs: a realistic number and a clear sense of what they'd need to do differently to get a better one.

The gap in the market is the self-serve entry point — where a business owner can understand their valuation range, what's holding it back, and what to fix, before they're ready to engage a formal adviser.

How to do a rough valuation yourself

For a quick sanity check, here's a four-step process:

Step 1: Calculate your adjusted EBITDA

Start with net profit from your most recent financial year. Add back: owner salary above market rate for the role, personal expenses through the business, depreciation, interest, and one-off items. The result is your adjusted EBITDA.

Step 2: Apply the appropriate multiple

Use the table above to find your industry range. Start in the middle of the range and adjust: add half a turn if you have recurring revenue, documented systems, or strong growth; subtract half a turn if you have key-person dependency, customer concentration, or inconsistent financials.

Step 3: Apply a discount for size

Smaller businesses typically trade at the lower end of their industry range. A $200,000 EBITDA business generally commands a lower multiple than a $1 million EBITDA business in the same sector — the risk profile is higher and the buyer pool is smaller.

Step 4: Check against comparable sales

Businesses sold through brokers in Australia typically achieve 2×–4× EBITDA at the SMB end of the market. If your calculation produces a number significantly outside that range, review your assumptions — either the EBITDA calculation or the multiple needs adjusting.

The May 2026 budget factor

There is a timing dimension to this that's worth understanding in 2026. The federal government is reviewing the 50% CGT discount ahead of the May 12 budget. If the discount is reduced, the after-tax proceeds on a business sale fall significantly — potentially by $50,000 to $150,000 on a mid-market exit.

For owners considering a sale in the next 12–18 months, the current tax settings are the ones you know. Understanding your valuation now means you can make an informed decision about timing — before the rules change in a way that affects your bottom line.

The valuation question and the timing question are connected. You can't answer one without the other.