Accounting, Business Consulting Services, Financial Model, Financial Services, Service Businesses

Business Valuation, Cash Flow Projections, Debt Service Coverage, Excel, Financial Model, Loans, Pro-Forma

Most accounting-firm templates are startup or operating forecasts, and most brokers headline the standard-rate fee schedule and anchor on 1x gross fees. But accountants write work down: you collect a realization rate, not the rack rate, and the seller is usually the top biller whose clients may not all stay after the sale. This 5-year, SBA-lender-ready model reads an independent accounting / bookkeeping / tax firm the way a disciplined buyer and a bank do.

Realization-rate bridge and revenue-quality engine. Four service lines (recurring compliance / CAAS, annual tax prep, non-recurring advisory, attest), each quoted at a standard fee, written down by its realization rate to net collected fees, then at its own gross margin. The blended realization (about 89%) is the honesty number: a book quoted at standard rates overstates by about 11%. The recurring-CAAS share (about 45%) and the renewable-book share (about 88%), not the top line, decide the multiple.

The summer cash trough, counted. A tax practice collects most fees in a roughly 14-week Q1 spike while the SBA loan amortises over all twelve months. The model spreads revenue across the calendar and counts the months where collections do not cover the bank: four in a tax-season practice, zero in a year-round CAAS firm. Size the working-capital line to the real seasonality.

The honesty a broker’s sheet skips. It reads the book on collected fees, pays a market-rate producer to replace the owner-biller, and books an explicit technology and transition reserve. So the true DSCR (1.43x) sits next to the naive broker DSCR (2.88x); the gap is the producer salary and the reserve. The recurring-vs-lumpy carve-out re-rates the non-recurring advisory work.

The down-case that matters. The sector’s number-one risk is client attrition on transfer. If post-sale retention lands at the profession’s 75-80% average instead of 90%, plus AI and fee compression, DSCR drops to 0.66x, well below the 1.25x floor, and the earnout clawback trips. The 4.5x renewable-book coverage is the cushion.

SBA 7(a) capital stack with buyer equity, a seller note (full-standby vs amortizing lever), the DSCR gate, a goodwill $500k valuation-trigger flag, and a 5-year cash-on-cash and equity multiple. No IRR is printed, deliberately.

Inside: ten Excel sheets (every calculation a formula, Google-Sheets-safe, no macros), a 25-page PDF guide, three firm profiles (Solo Tax-Practice / Balanced Compliance Firm / CAAS-Advisory Forward), and a sourced benchmarks sheet. Educational planning tool, not financial, legal, tax or investment advice.

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