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Is my business ready to sell?
Twelve questions, an instant score, and nothing you enter is stored. They are the twelve things a buyer’s accountant and lender actually test. Run the check, then read what your band means and which fixes are worth real money.
Skip the reading and run the checkThe twelve factors scored here are the same ones a buyer works through in due diligence. Last updated 15 September 2026.
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Check it yourself
A business is ready to sell when it runs without the owner, the revenue is spread across customers and repeats, the records survive scrutiny, and the licences, the lease and the team are secure. The twelve question check on this page scores those factors out of twenty four in about two minutes, in your browser, with nothing stored or sent.
- Twelve questions, an instant readiness score out of twenty four, and a clear next step.
- The check runs in your browser. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent and there is no form to complete.
- The score is indicative only. No business should be bought, sold or valued on the basis of it.
- The twelve factors scored are the same ones a buyer works through in due diligence.
The readiness check
Twelve questions. Your score as you go.
These are the twelve things a buyer's accountant and lender actually test. Answer honestly; nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere. It runs entirely on this page.
Each answer scores 2 for yes, 1 for partly, 0 for not yet. The bands underneath this checker explain what your range means.
The short answer, in six lines
Everything below expands on one of these, with the register or the regulator named so you can check it yourself.
At a glance
- The evidence a buyer works from
- Business Queensland’s due diligence list asks a buyer for tax returns for a minimum of 3 previous years, and a profit and loss statement for 3 years or longer to determine market variations. Those documents are the evidence of your earnings. Nothing said in a meeting replaces them, and that guidance is current at 14 August 2026.
- Why the calendar decides it
- A change you make 4 months before listing appears in part of one financial year. The same change made 24 months before listing appears in two complete comparative years, which is the period a buyer’s accountant models. Business Queensland tells you to collate business financials for at least the past 3 years.
- The lease gap
- A remaining term under 2 years with no option is a finance problem before it is a legal one. It also bears on the GST going concern treatment, because A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999 (Cth) s38-325(2)(a) requires you to supply all of the things necessary for continued operation, and for a leasehold business that includes the premises. Since 1 August 2025 a Queensland landlord has 1 month to decide on consent to an assignment under the Property Law Act 2023 (Qld) s142(5).
- The employment gap
- Queensland long service leave is 8.6667 weeks after 10 years of continuous service under the Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld) s95, and it is normally handled as a settlement adjustment. A buyer who is not an associated entity may decline to recognise prior service for annual leave and redundancy pay under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) ss91 and 122. Without signed agreements and an accrual schedule you cannot price either position before you negotiate it.
- The ATO gap
- The ATO may report a business tax debt to credit reporting bureaus where at least $100,000 is overdue by more than 90 days and you are not effectively engaging. Before disclosure the ATO gives written notice providing 28 days from receiving it to act. A director penalty notice gives 21 days, counted from the day the ATO posts it. Both periods are current ATO guidance at 14 August 2026.
- The plant and security gap
- A buyer runs a grantor search against your ACN or ABN on the Personal Property Securities Register at ppsr.gov.au, plus serial number searches on vehicles and equipment. Without an asset register showing each item, its serial number and its finance status, you cannot warrant title and the buyer cannot complete those searches. Registrations on that register run for up to 7 years, for 7 to 25 years, or with no end date.
What the score bands mean
If you scored well, you may be closer to a sale ready position than you think, and the priority is to understand your number and test the market's appetite before your circumstances or the cycle change. If you landed in the middle, you have a saleable business with clear, fixable gaps, and twelve to twenty four months is enough time to change the answers a buyer will test. What that is worth depends on the business, the market and the buyer in front of you, and nobody can tell you that number before the campaign runs. If you scored low, that is not bad news, it is a map, and every point on this checklist is buildable. In all three cases the next step is the same conversation.
The forty eight hour test
| What you should be able to produce in 48 hours | Who stops on it | What it settles |
|---|---|---|
| Three years of lodged tax returns and financial statements | The buyer’s accountant and the buyer’s lender | Business Queensland asks for tax returns for a minimum of 3 previous years and a profit and loss statement for 3 years or longer |
| Current year management accounts, reconciled to those returns | The buyer’s accountant | Whether trading since the last return is the same story the returns tell |
| The lease, any deed of variation, and the option dates | The buyer’s lender and the landlord | The remaining term, which is what a lender assesses. Landlord consent runs 1 month from full particulars under the Property Law Act 2023 (Qld) s142(5) |
| A schedule per employee: start date, classification, accrued annual leave and accrued long service leave | The buyer’s accountant and the buyer’s solicitor | The settlement adjustment. Queensland long service leave is 8.6667 weeks after 10 years of continuous service under the Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld) s95 |
| Signed employment and contractor agreements | The buyer’s solicitor | Award coverage, classification, and the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) Part 2-8 position on recognising prior service |
| An asset register with serial numbers and finance status | The buyer’s solicitor and any equipment financier | Whether you can warrant title, and whether plant can be searched by serial number |
| A current search against the selling entity on the Personal Property Securities Register | The buyer’s solicitor | Every registered security interest to be paid out and released at settlement. A search returns a certificate proving the register’s state at that moment |
| A stock figure from a recent count | The buyer and the buyer’s accountant | The stock adjustment at settlement, and the obsolete proportion inside it |
| Your top ten customers and the revenue each represents | The buyer and the buyer’s lender | Revenue concentration, and whether that revenue is contracted or personal |
Each row is an item named in Business Queensland’s due diligence categories, or required by the Act cited beside it. Current at 14 August 2026. If you can produce the left hand column within 48 hours and without apology, you are ready. If you cannot, that is the work, and no amount of marketing substitutes for it.
Twelve to twenty four months is where the work is done
Two years of targeted work on the right two or three issues changes what a buyer finds when they look. Negotiation can only trade on what is already there, which is why finding out early beats finding out accurately.
A checklist tells you half the story
This tool is genuinely useful, it points at the levers buyers care about, and working on them lifts your value. But treat it as a starting point, not a verdict. Two businesses with the same score can be worth very different amounts, and a business that scores poorly on paper can still be exactly what a particular buyer is hunting for today. Markets, buyer appetite and timing move in ways no self assessment can capture.
That is the real reason to talk to a broker regardless of your number. A good broker may already have buyers circling your sector. They may see an angle on your business you are too close to notice. They know what is selling right now and for how much, which no checklist can. And if the honest answer is that you are a year or two from ready, they will tell you that too, and help you plan the run up so those years build value instead of drifting. Planning your exit with a professional is not a step you take once you are ready. It is how you get ready.
What a buyer is actually pricing when you are the business
A buyer is not pricing your effort. A buyer is pricing whether the earnings survive the day you stop. Where the customer relationships, the supplier terms, the technical knowledge and the licences sit with you personally, the goodwill is personal rather than transferable. That is a different asset from the one the asking price assumes, and the gap between the two is what the negotiation is about.
The buyer’s responses are predictable, and each of them costs the seller. A longer restraint, because a purchaser of goodwill is entitled to protect itself against competition from the vendor, as Latham CJ put it in Lindner v Murdock’s Garage (1950) 83 CLR 628. A longer handover, and Business Queensland contemplates a seller offering to remain in the business for 3 to 12 months paid as a management employee. An earn-out, so the buyer pays for the transfer only once it has happened. A lower price where none of those is agreed.
What can be moved is more than owners expect. Quoting and pricing rules can be written down. Supplier terms can be held in the business name rather than in yours. Key customers can be put on written contracts, and a second person from the business can be introduced to every one of those accounts. Operating processes can be documented to the point where a new person can follow them. A manager can be promoted or hired and given real authority, and that manager appears in the accounts as a wage, which is exactly where a buyer wants to see it.
What cannot be moved is worth naming too. A statutory licence held in your own name does not transfer on an asset sale; the buyer applies in its own name and the regulator decides. Your standing in a trade does not transfer, and the restraint you sign means you cannot lend it back afterwards. Where a single large customer buys from you personally and says so, no document changes that on its own; the answer is a contract and a second relationship holder, and both take time. Reducing owner dependence is the change that needs 12 to 24 months to show in the accounts, which makes it the first thing to start and the last thing to finish.
Whatever your score, this is the part that matters
Gaps and buyer responses drawn from Business Queensland, Preparing to sell your business and Due diligence when buying a business, and from the Acts and ATO guidance cited in each row. Current at 14 August 2026. General information only.
Who wrote this, and why the readiness questions are these ones
Tony Pope holds Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence 4963575, issued July 2026, and is a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers. He works from Gumdale, Queensland 4154.
What sits behind this page is the other side of the transaction. He co founded, owned and built a toy business with his wife, and they sold it. That sale involved the items in the tables above: counting stock, tying management accounts back to lodged returns, separating personal spending from business spending, and answering a buyer’s questions about who the customers actually belonged to. He holds a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and has built and designed online safety training programmes, which is the same discipline as documenting a process so that someone else can run it.
He runs sales and marketing for a hinterland tree farm. His father in law spent a working life growing turf in Queensland, built the business to substantial scale and sold it to competitors. It is the reason the questions on this page are the ones an owner is actually asked, and the reason you get a plain answer about readiness rather than a comfortable one.
Questions people ask
3 of the 20 answered in full on the questions page for this topic.
My accountant does the books once a year. Is that enough to sell?
Not on its own. A buyer asks for tax returns for a minimum of 3 previous years and a profit and loss statement for 3 years or longer, per Business Queensland’s due diligence list. Annual accounts answer the first request.
I run some personal costs through the business. Will a buyer accept the add-backs?
Some buyers will. A bank generally will not lend against add-backs it cannot verify from source documents, so add-backs shrink the pool of buyers who can actually complete a purchase.
Should I sort the lease out before I go to market, or leave it to the buyer?
Before, because the remaining term is what a lender assesses. A term under 2 years with no option is difficult to finance, and a buyer borrowing against the business needs security of tenure.
More questions owners ask before going to market, all 20 of them.
Go deeper
The long form, where it belongs
The full detail is on the pages below, each on its own page.
Check it yourself16 primary sources
Primary sources, none of them affiliated with me and none of them endorsing this site. Where anything here differs from an official source, the official source is right.
The terms a buyer will test you on before you go to market13 definitions
Plain definitions of the words a buyer, a financier or a regulator will use. Where a term has a statutory anchor, it is named.
Under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) s311, an employee whose employment with the old employer has terminated, who becomes employed by the new employer within 3 months, doing the same or substantially the same work, where there is a connection between the two employers. The status decides whether Part 2-8 applies at all.
The status that removes the buyer’s discretion under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) Part 2-8. Where the buyer and the seller are associated entities, prior service transfers for annual leave and redundancy pay without the buyer having a choice under ss91 and 122. Where they are not, the buyer may decline to recognise it.
The Queensland industrial relations term for the transfer of a business. The Industrial Relations Bill 2016 explanatory notes for clause 132 record that the transfer of a business does not break continuity of service for a transferred employee, and that service with the former employer is taken to be service with the new employer. The buyer gets no choice about it.
For redundancy pay, the Fair Work Ombudsman states that a small business employer is an employer who employs fewer than 15 employees at the time when notice is given. At 15 employees or more the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) s119 scale applies, running from 4 weeks at 1 year of service to 16 weeks at 9 years.
Premises situated in a retail shopping centre, or used wholly or predominantly for carrying on a retail business, with a leased floor area not more than 1,000 square metres. Retail Shop Leases Act 1994 (Qld) s5A excludes a shop with a floor area of more than 1,000 square metres, which decides whether the Act’s assignment protections apply to you.
The notice a lessee gives a lessor requesting consent to an assignment or other dealing, containing any information required under the lease, under the Property Law Act 2023 (Qld) s142. It starts the lessor’s 1 month decision period once full particulars are provided, and a request for further information under s142(4) restarts that period.
In the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth), the person who gives the security interest. A buyer of a business searches the Personal Property Securities Register against the selling entity as grantor, using its ACN or ABN, which is why the register reflects the entity rather than the business name.
Making a security interest effective against third parties, usually by registration on the Personal Property Securities Register. Under the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) s267(2) an unperfected security interest vests in the grantor immediately before a winding up, bankruptcy or administration event. That protects a liquidator, not a buyer of a solvent business.
A supply under an arrangement under which the supplier supplies to the recipient all of the things that are necessary for the continued operation of an enterprise, and carries on the enterprise until the day of the supply. A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999 (Cth) s38-325(2). The ATO ruling GSTR 2002/5 explains what all of the things necessary means.
A business asset of a Queensland business, under the Duties Act 2001 (Qld) s34. Section 35 covers goodwill, a statutory business licence, a business name, a franchise right, a debt, a supply right, intellectual property and personal property used in Queensland for the business. It is dutiable property under s10(1)(d).
A personal liability imposed on a company director for the company’s PAYG withholding, GST and superannuation guarantee charge obligations. The ATO enforces it by a director penalty notice with a 21 day response period, and the ATO states that the period starts on the day it posts the notice, not the day the director receives it.
The ATO’s own term for what keeps a business tax debt out of credit reporting. Its material on disclosure of business tax debts names a payment plan, a release application, an objection, a tribunal review and a Tax Ombudsman complaint. A debt of at least $100,000 overdue by more than 90 days can be reported where you are not effectively engaging.
One of the basic conditions for the small business capital gains tax concessions. The ATO states that the total net value of CGT assets owned by you, entities connected with you, affiliates and entities connected with your affiliates must not exceed $6 million. The alternative basic condition is a CGT small business entity with aggregated turnover of less than $2 million.
Whatever your score, the next step is the same
A high score and a low score end in the same place, which is a conversation about what to do with the next twelve months. Thirty minutes, no cost, and nobody finds out you asked.
Ask what it is worth
Free, in writing, and nobody finds out you asked. Tell me the trade and the suburb and I will do the rest.
Nobody finds out you are selling. This goes to me only, into my own database in Sydney. I will not contact your accountant, your landlord, your bank or your staff, ever, unless you ask me to.
If you would rather not put anything in writing yet, ring 0431 124 128. Prefer to pick a time yourself? Book a time in my diary.