Frequently asked questions

Seller's Discretionary Earnings (SDE) is the standard way small, owner-operated businesses are valued. It starts with your business's net income, then adds back the owner's salary, personal perks run through the business, depreciation, interest, and other one-time or discretionary costs — arriving at the true cash benefit available to a single owner-operator. Adjusted EBITDA is used instead for larger businesses that already have a management team in place, since a buyer in that situation isn't stepping in to do the owner's job themselves.

No. This is an informational, directional estimate — not a certified appraisal, formal valuation, or fairness opinion, and it hasn't been reviewed by a CPA, licensed business appraiser, or lender. It's built to give you a real, defensible starting number using the same methodology brokers use, but for an SBA loan application, a formal sale, or a legal matter, you'll want a credentialed appraiser to sign off.

We use four fixed Main Street SDE-size tiers, based on published industry transaction data (BizBuySell, IBBA/M&A Source Market Pulse), and the tool automatically selects the tier that matches your business's calculated SDE. From there, adjustment factors for earnings trend, risk, and upside move the multiple within a realistic range for your specific situation.

As accurate as the financial information you provide and the assumptions that go into any rule-of-thumb, multiple-based valuation. It's the same core methodology a business broker uses for an informal opinion of value — genuinely useful for planning, negotiating, or sanity-checking an asking price, but it isn't a substitute for a professional appraisal when real money and legal paperwork are on the line.

Owners thinking about selling, buyers evaluating an asking price, anyone heading into an SBA financing conversation who wants to know if a deal actually services the debt, and franchisors who want their franchisees walking into resale conversations with real numbers instead of guesses.

A few minutes. Upload or paste in your financials, the tool reads and recasts them automatically, and your report is ready to review on screen and delivered to your inbox right away.

It's our own internal standard, applied to every Prime Certified Opinion of Value: a documented recast methodology, a valuation multiple benchmarked against published Main Street transaction data, a full sanity-check and SBA-financing review, and complete transparency on every adjustment. It's not issued or endorsed by any outside accreditation body, we built it, and we're upfront about that. See the full Certification page for the exact criteria.

It's used to generate your report and nothing else. We don't sell your data, and we don't use it to train any AI model. See our Privacy Policy for the full detail, including which service providers help us process it.

Because your report generates and delivers instantly, purchases are generally final. If something breaks on our end and your report doesn't generate properly, contact us and we'll fix it or refund you — just reach out at hello@primebizvalue.com.

Yes, we offer partner discount codes for franchise brands who want to make this available to their network. Get in touch and mention your brand.

The tool is built and calibrated specifically for businesses valued under about $2M — the range where SDE-based, broker-style valuation is the standard approach. If your business is meaningfully larger, an EBITDA-based valuation from a lower-middle-market advisor will generally serve you better than this tool.