Financial Intelligence and EBITDA Defensibility

No - and it is actually common. ExValu works with your existing accountant's output rather than replacing it. We take the management accounts as the starting point and build the normalization layer, dashboard, and forecast on top of them. Your accountant does not need to change how they work.

Where useful, we can provide a brief for your accountant explaining what format or additional analysis would be most useful for the financial deliverables. Most accountants are familiar with EBITDA normalization for sale processes and can provide input efficiently once they understand the context.

Add-backs fall into three categories. The first is owner-related costs - salary above market rate for a replacement hire, personal expenses run through the business, pension contributions above what an equivalent employee would receive. The second is one-off costs - legal fees for resolved disputes, relocation costs, costs related to a specific non-recurring event. The third is non-cash charges - depreciation on assets that will transfer with the business, amortisation of intangibles.

The test for every add-back is whether a buyer would incur that cost after acquisition. If they would not - because it was owner-specific or genuinely non-recurring - it belongs in the normalization. If they would, it stays in reported EBITDA. The EBITDA Attribution Note documents the rationale for each adjustment so a buyer's advisor can assess it independently.

Yes. The financial dashboard is built to connect with the most widely used accounting platforms - Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage are the most common. The connection is read-only and uses standard API integrations. No data is modified in your accounting system; the dashboard only reads and displays.

Where a direct integration is not available for a specific platform, the dashboard can be fed from periodic data exports - a slightly less automated approach but producing the same output. The methodology is documented either way, which is what matters for due diligence purposes.

The 30-day test runs into Month 6 by design - it is initiated at the end of Month 5 and completed and reported in Month 6. If the test needs to be delayed by a week or two due to a specific business circumstance, that is accommodated. The Certificate requires a completed 30-day test, not necessarily one that started on a specific date.

What cannot be accommodated is a 30-day test where the owner is regularly involved. The test requires genuine absence - not reduced involvement. If Month 5 reveals that genuine absence is still not possible, that gap is the priority remediation item before Month 6 begins, and ExValu works with you to close it.

Project-based and irregular revenue businesses benefit most from a properly documented forecast methodology - precisely because the revenue pattern is not obvious from a P&L alone. The forecast model is built to reflect your specific revenue pattern: project pipeline, signed contracts, renewal cycles, and seasonal adjustments.

The methodology note that accompanies the forecast explains the assumptions and data sources - so a buyer can understand how the number was produced and what would need to change for it to be wrong. A documented, explained forecast for an irregular-revenue business is more compelling to a sophisticated buyer than a simple extrapolation for a predictable one, because it demonstrates genuine financial intelligence rather than a spreadsheet average.