The JPAbusiness Buying a Business Planning Sheet is designed to help you work out whether a business you are considering buying fits you and your risk profile. There are plenty of good businesses out there, but the key to a successful business purchase is finding a business that will be ‘good’ for you. When assessing different businesses, the planning sheet prompts you to consider 15 questions, including: Why will you succeed in this business? How does the asking price compare to a market appraisal of recent sales and market trends? Do you fully understand the requirements of the lease relat ..read more

Q.1 Do I really want to sell my business and, if so, why? Do you want to sell because you’ve had the business for five years and the results have been poor? Do you want to sell because you’re over-exposed to borrowings, your cash flow is tight and you can’t see a way to get ahead? Do you want to sell because it’s time to retire or move on to the next stage of your career? Your reasons for selling will help you create a negotiation framework to determine what an acceptable offer might be, so it is critical you be honest with yourself when answering this question ..read more

If you are considering entering into a joint venture, we have created the following infographic to help you. The infographic lists five issues to be aware of and which should be raised with all parties early in the planning and negotiation stages.  ..read more

Business owners looking to drive their business forward need to be aware of their capital base and liquidity for working capital and investment purposes. Critical to this is maintaining a strong cash flow. The infographic below contains 4 top tips for managing business debt and maintaining a healthy cash flow ..read more

It’s never too early to start thinking about your succession strategy and developing the skills of your team and business capability. Succession planning is about creating a sustainable business that will continue to operate successfully into the future, whether you stay in the business or not. The following infographic contains 6 succession strategies to help future-proof your business for when and if you decide to take up an exit opportunity, or relinquish operational involvement in your business ..read more

When running a business, we all know it's important to have happy customers, but it's equally important to ensure we have 'valuable' customers. The cheat sheet below provides 4 steps to identifying and building a valuable customer base. Step one is to determine the quality of your current customer base. If you find quality is lacking in some areas – for example, client diversity or payment times – follow the next steps to help you create a deliberate strategy for attracting valuable customers ..read more

The JPAbusiness Staff Training Plan template has been designed to help business owners and senior managers manage their staff training needs. Use the Staff Training Plan when conducting performance reviews with team members to help identify skills gaps and map out a plan for your employees’ future training. Click below to download your free template ..read more

A good team or business culture is hard to codify or document, but you can definitely feel it. And even if you're not the 'designated leader' in your team, you can still influence its culture. The infographic below features my top 7 tips for developing a positive culture within your team. Practise these 7 actions, in your own way and in your role, to help build a positive team culture ..read more

Goodwill ­is a key component of business value, alongside factors such as working capital, and plant and equipment. Many people think of goodwill as an ‘intangible’ and therefore its value can’t be proved, but that's not necessarily the case. Goodwill value relies on being able to prove the sustainability of a business’s earnings going forward. In this blog we’re going to explain how record-keeping is a critical component of proving that sustainability, and provide some simple templates to get you started ..read more

Our clients often seek a business valuation in response to a 'significant event’, for example retirement or restructuring, a financing requirement, purchase offer and so on. We continue to offer these event-based valuation services, and always will. But as I explain in this video, clients are increasingly treating their businesses as an investment and seeking our valuation services to ensure they are receiving the optimum return for that investment, both while running the business and also potentially on exit ..read more