How much is your business worth? (ValuSource's Dealmaker and Accounting Professionals Software's Business Valuation Planner financial software) (Software Review) (Reviews) (evaluation)

How Much Is Your Business Worth?

IN BRIEF

Dealmaker Version 2.0. ValuSource, 1939 Grand Ave., San Diego, CA 92109; 800-825-863. Uses 320K of RAM. Requires DOS 2.0 and any release of 1-2-3. Requires expanded memory to run with Release 3. $395. 30-day trial period, unlimited warranty against defective media.

Business Valuation Planner Version 1.0. Accounting Professionals Software, 42.0 West Vickery Blvd., Forth Worth, TX 76107; 817-738-3122. Uses 134K of RAM. Requires DOS 2.0 and any release of 1-2-3. $195. 30-day money-back guarantee, 90-day warranty against defective media.

Many business consultants may never become involved in high-stakes leveraged buy outs of the Fortune 500, but legions of them are responsible for estimating the worth of some 100,000 businesses sold in the United States each year.

Business valuation is an imprecise science at best, these deal makers would concede, but there ways to impose a method on the madness. Dealmaker from ValuSource and Business Valuation Planner from Accounting Professionals Software are two tools that help private companies measure their market value, whether for sale or as a means of weighing future opportunities, maximizing estate planning, or initiating an employee stock-ownership plan.

Both of these 1-2-3 spreadsheet templates are best for examining the net worth of private companies with sales between $1 million and $10 million. While the packages offer help in gathering and prioritizing preliminary information such as historical data, they come into their own for processing actual valuations. Dealmaker and Business Valuation Planner free analysts …