How to Get Your Data Ready for a Valuation and Sell-Side M&A Process

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Most business sales do not stall on price. They stall on data. The owner wants to move, the buyer wants to move, and then everyone waits nine weeks for a set of numbers that already exist inside Xero, QuickBooks or Sage.

This guide fixes that. It tells you exactly which files we need, exactly which columns those files must contain, exactly which buttons to press in your accounting system, and how to use an AI assistant to build the finished workbook for you in an evening rather than a quarter.

You do not need to be technical. You do not need to have used Claude or ChatGPT before. If you can copy text and click a download button, you can do this.

The short version

If you read nothing else, do these six things.

1. Export 36 months of monthly profit and loss from your accounting system, in Excel or CSV. Not annual totals. Not a PDF. One column per month.
2. Export revenue by customer for each of the last three financial years, in Excel or CSV.
3. Export the balance sheet at each of the last three year ends, plus the most recent month end.
4. Export aged debtors and aged creditors as at the most recent month end.
5. Paste our prompt into Claude, attach those exports, and let it build one clean workbook with a README tab, live formulas and a gaps list.
6. Anonymise the client names to numbers before the file leaves your business, then send it back.

Time required: roughly two hours of your attention, most of which is waiting while the AI works. Compare that with the six to twelve weeks these requests normally take when they go through an accountant queue.

Why the monthly profit and loss matters more than anything else

Every valuation is built on earnings, and every earnings figure is built on a judgment about whether those earnings are dependable. Annual totals cannot answer that question. Monthly detail can.

With 36 months of monthly data a buyer can see:

• Whether revenue is recurring, repeat or one-off, and in what mix.
• Whether gross margin is stable or drifting.
• Whether overheads have grown faster than revenue.
• Whether a single large project is flattering a year.
• What normal actually looks like, so an unusual month can be identified and priced properly.

Without it, the buyer prices the uncertainty. That discount is almost always larger than anything you would have lost by disclosing the detail.

Why we ask for spreadsheets and not PDFs

A management report PDF is a picture of numbers. It cannot be recalculated, reconciled or charted, and if we receive 36 of them we still have to retype the lot, which introduces errors that then have to be checked.

Note the language difference between platforms. Xero, QuickBooks and Sage all call the output an export, and offer it as Excel or CSV. Those are the two formats we want. If a screen only offers PDF, you are usually on the wrong report or in the wrong menu, and the section below tells you where to go instead.

Exactly what we need, tab by tab

This is the structure our analysts work in. If your AI assistant builds this, nothing has to be chased later.

Workbook one: the financial pack

Tab: README

Plain text. What the file is, the source system, the export date, the period covered, the currency, whether figures are VAT inclusive or exclusive, whether the basis is cash or accruals, the colour key, any mapping decisions and any gaps. Someone who has never seen the file should understand it from this tab alone.

Tab: Monthly P&L

Every item below is a column, not a row. Months run down the sheet, one row each, oldest first, labelled 2023-01, 2023-02 and so on.

If your export does not split revenue that way, keep your own lines and record the mapping in the README. Do not force your business into headings that do not fit it.

Tab: Annual summary. The last three completed financial years on the same basis, with the year on year movement in currency and in per cent.

Tab: Balance sheet. One column per year end plus the latest month end: cash at bank, trade debtors, stock and work in progress, other current assets, fixed assets net, trade creditors, accruals and deferred income, bank loans and finance, director loans, creditors due after one year, net assets.

Tab: Adjusted earnings bridge. Start at operating profit, then one row per add-back: owner and director pay, owner pension, owner vehicles, personal or family costs, one-off legal and professional costs, non-recurring project losses. Each with a note on the evidence behind it. Never bundle add-backs into a single line, because a buyer will simply delete a line they cannot see the working for.

Tab: Cap table. Holder reference, share class, number of shares, percentage of issued share capital, active in the business day to day, date acquired, and any options, warrants or loan notes outstanding.

Tab: Anomalies. Every spike, gap, sign error, mid-year change of character in a cost line, and every debtor that never clears. One row each.

Tab: Notes and gaps. Everything still open.

Workbook two: the client ledger

This is the one owners underestimate, and the one that most often moves the multiple. A buyer is not only buying profit, they are buying the durability of the customer base.

One row per client, three years of history, names replaced by numbers. The exact column layout is the second sheet shown above.

From that single tab the following falls out automatically, and every one of these is a question a buyer will ask:

• Revenue concentration: what share of revenue sits with the top one, five and ten clients.
• Retention: how many clients billed in year one were still billing in year three.
• Median and average client spend, and average client life in months.
• A dormant list: clients who used to spend and have gone quiet. In practice this is often the fastest revenue in the business to recover, and it is worth building even if you never sell.

Tab: KPIs and OKRs. Whatever you already track: contract renewal rate, engineer or consultant utilisation, average job value, pipeline value, quote to win rate, days sales outstanding, headcount by function. Leave a line blank rather than guessing it. A blank is honest, a guess is a problem in diligence.

Getting the exports out, click by click

Xero

• Monthly profit and loss. Reports, then Profit and Loss. Set the date range to cover 36 months, then use Compare periods and select months so the report comes out one column per month. Export as Excel. Guidance: Xero Central: Profit and Loss.
• Revenue by customer. Reports, then Income by Contact. Run it once per financial year and export each one.
• Video walkthroughs live on the official Xero YouTube channel. Prefer their current material over third-party tutorials, which are frequently several interface versions out of date.

QuickBooks Online

• Monthly profit and loss. Reports, Profit and Loss, set a custom date range, then set Display columns by: Month. See customising financial reports.
• Export. Use the export icon and choose Excel, never PDF. See exporting reports to Excel.
• Revenue by customer. Run Sales by Customer Summary once per financial year.
• Current video guides are on the official QuickBooks UK channel.

Sage

• Monthly profit and loss. Reporting, then Profit and Loss. Use the customisable Profit and Loss to get comparative periods rather than one total column, and export to Excel. The standard reports are documented in Sage help.
• Revenue by customer. Use the customer activity or sales by customer report, run per financial year.
• Sage has no native AI connector today, so the manual export route is the one to follow.

Using Claude to do the assembly

Exporting is the easy half. Turning four messy exports into one clean workbook is where most people give up. This is exactly the kind of work an AI assistant is good at, provided you instruct it properly.

We use Claude Opus 5 Max for this. Xero and QuickBooks Online both have official Claude connectors, which means the assistant can read the reports directly and you may not need to export anything at all.

• Xero connector for Claude
• Intuit QuickBooks connector for Claude
• The full connector directory, including Gmail and Microsoft for the last communication column

Our two prompts are long on purpose. A short prompt produces a tidy looking spreadsheet with invented months in it, which is worse than no spreadsheet at all. The long version instructs the assistant to behave like a buy-side diligence specialist: to refuse summary data, to leave a cell blank rather than estimate it, to show you a discrepancy rather than quietly reconcile it, and to end every reply with a numbered OUTSTANDING list so you always know what is left.

Prompt A builds the financial pack. Prompt B builds the client ledger, the retention metrics and the KPI tab.

Both are ready to copy, with the vendor links embedded, on the Data Pack page. Copy Prompt A, paste it into a new Claude conversation, and answer its questions. Expect twenty to forty minutes. When it says the workbook is complete, click the download button on the file it produced and save the .xlsx to your computer. Then run Prompt B in a fresh conversation.

Two things to watch for, because they catch everyone:

• The assistant will keep asking questions. That is deliberate. Do not tell it to skip ahead, because the value is in the interrogation.
• The finished file needs to be downloaded. AI tools display a preview of the spreadsheet in the conversation. That preview is not a file. Look for the download control on the file itself and save it locally before you close the tab.

Anonymising your clients before anything leaves the business

You should never need to share customer names to get a valuation. Replace them with numbers before the file goes anywhere, and keep your own private mapping sheet so you can reverse it later if a buyer reaches confirmatory diligence under an NDA.

The rules are simple:

1. Every client becomes a reference: 001, 002, 003. The same client keeps the same reference across every tab and every year.
2. Add a client type column instead: hospital, school, care home, main contractor, private landlord. Sector mix carries real valuation weight, and it carries no identifying information.
3. Replace supplier and subcontractor names the same way if they are commercially sensitive.
4. Replace employee names with Employee 1, Employee 2, and keep the job titles. Titles matter, names do not.
5. Remove addresses, bank details, account numbers, VAT numbers and company registration numbers.
6. Change no figures. Not one. Do not round, do not summarise, do not delete rows. An anonymised file that has been stripped of detail is useless to everyone.

Keep the mapping sheet in a separate file, on your own machine, and do not upload it.

Turning off model training before you upload anything

Every major AI assistant lets you control whether your conversations are used to improve their models. Do this once, before you paste anything financial in.

• Claude. Settings, then Privacy. Review the setting covering the use of your chats to improve the models and switch it off if you prefer. Anthropic documents its position on training data here. Business and enterprise plans are covered by different commercial terms to consumer accounts.
• ChatGPT. Settings, then Data controls. Turn off the option to improve the model for everyone. Team, Enterprise and API usage are excluded from training by default under the OpenAI business terms.
• Gemini. Settings, then the Gemini Apps Activity control. Turning it off stops future chats being retained for review. The control is documented in the Gemini Apps Activity help page. Google Workspace accounts sit under separate terms.

Two further habits worth adopting: use a business account rather than a personal free one where you can, and delete the conversation once the workbook is safely downloaded.

A note on data protection

Anonymising client names is good commercial practice, and it also reduces the amount of personal data you are processing, which matters if any of your customers are individuals or sole traders rather than companies. Under UK GDPR you remain the data controller for your customer records, including when you use a third-party tool to process them. Check your own privacy notice and your contracts before uploading customer-level data to any AI platform, and check whether your sector carries additional obligations.

This is not legal, accounting or data protection advice. It is practical guidance on preparing information efficiently. DealFlowAgent is not a law firm, is not your data protection officer and does not audit accounts. If you handle sensitive personal data, hold public sector contracts, or have specific regulatory obligations, take proper advice before sharing anything externally. Responsibility for compliance stays with you.

If your accountant holds the records

Ideally you get access and run the exports yourself, because a request sitting in an accountant queue is usually the single longest delay in the whole process. If that is not possible, send this. It names every report, the period and the format, so nothing comes back as a retyped summary.

Hello [accountant name],

I am preparing information for a formal valuation and value driver exercise with our M&A adviser, DealFlowAgent. I need a defined set of exports from our accounting records. Please send everything as Excel (.xlsx) or CSV. Please do not send PDFs, screenshots or retyped summaries: they cannot be reconciled or recalculated and will have to be sent back.

Company: [company name], company number [number]
Accounting system: [Xero / QuickBooks / Sage / other]
Period required: the 36 months ending [most recent completed month, e.g. 31 July 2026]
Deadline: [date]

1. MONTHLY PROFIT AND LOSS, 36 MONTHS
Run the P&L with columns set to months, so the file has one column per calendar month across the full 36 months, not one total column and not annual summaries. I need it at full nominal account detail, not the summary view. Specifically I need, per month:
   - Every revenue account separately, at the level held in the nominal ledger. Do not merge them into one "Sales" line. If revenue is analysed by department, tracking category, class or location, include that breakdown too.
   - Every cost of sales account separately: direct labour, materials, subcontractors, plant and hire, and anything else posted above gross profit.
   - Gross profit.
   - Every overhead account separately, at nominal level. Please keep director and owner remuneration, employer NIC, pension and benefits on their own lines and do not merge them into general salaries.
   - Depreciation, amortisation and interest each on their own line.
   - Operating profit and profit before tax.

2. ANNUAL PROFIT AND LOSS
The same detail for each of the last three completed financial years, on the same account structure, so the monthly file can be reconciled to the statutory position.

3. BALANCE SHEET
As at each of the last three financial year ends, plus the most recent month end. Full detail: cash, trade debtors, stock and work in progress, other current assets, fixed assets at cost and net, trade creditors, accruals, deferred income, VAT and PAYE liabilities, bank and asset finance, director loan accounts, and creditors falling due after one year.

4. AGED DEBTORS AND AGED CREDITORS
As at the most recent month end, at transaction level, showing customer or supplier, invoice date, due date, amount and ageing bucket.

5. REVENUE BY CUSTOMER
For each of the last three financial years, one row per customer, showing revenue in each year. In Xero this is Income by Contact, in QuickBooks it is Sales by Customer Summary, in Sage it is the customer activity or sales by customer report. Please also include, if the system holds it, first invoice date, last invoice date, number of invoices and total paid per customer.

6. TRIAL BALANCE
For each of the last three completed financial years and for the most recent month end.

7. NOMINAL LEDGER CODE LIST
The chart of accounts, showing code, name and category, so we can map your account structure correctly.

PLEASE ALSO CONFIRM IN YOUR REPLY
   a. The reporting currency.
   b. Whether figures are VAT inclusive or exclusive.
   c. Whether the basis is cash or accruals.
   d. The financial year end date, and whether any year in the period was a long or short accounting period.
   e. Which periods are finalised and which are still draft or unreconciled.
   f. Any restatements, prior year adjustments, or changes in accounting policy or account structure within the 36 months.
   g. Any material one-off items you are aware of: insurance claims, grants, legal settlements, government support, disposals, or unusual write-offs.
   h. Any balances that are estimates rather than reconciled figures, in particular accruals, work in progress and stock.

QUICKEST ROUTE
If it is faster for you, please give me read-only access to the accounting system and I will run these exports myself, at no cost to you and with no further calls on your time. If you prefer to run them, please confirm by [date] that you can meet the deadline above.

Thank you,
[your name]
[position], [company name]
[phone]

If they push back on read access, ask for the exports and a date. If they cannot commit to a date, that is worth knowing now rather than mid-process.

Keeping it current

Once the pack exists, maintaining it is a monthly job of about ten minutes. Add the new month to the P&L tab, update the client ledger where invoices have moved, and refresh the KPI lines. Owners who do this have a live answer to any buyer question and can move to market in weeks. Owners who do not rebuild the whole exercise from scratch every time somebody asks, which is exactly how a deal loses momentum.

Two points worth holding on to:

• The pack is useful whether or not you sell. Revenue concentration, retention and a dormant client list are operating information first and diligence material second.
• Data quality is itself a value driver. A buyer who can verify your numbers quickly pays a different price to one who cannot, before a single word of negotiation.

Next steps

1. Download the Exit Readiness Master Pack, a formula-driven workbook of twelve tabs covering everything above.
2. Copy the prompts from the Data Pack page and run Prompt A tonight.
3. Run the free valuation once your monthly P&L is in front of you. It takes about fifteen minutes and produces a written report rather than a number on a screen.

Further reading: what buyers actually value, in 30 factors, and the difference between a free valuation and a chartered accountant valuation.

Your Advisory Team

Experienced Dealmakers Lead Your Exit

A senior M&A bench, plus a sector specialist recruited for your industry on every deal.

M&A Deal Lead

Duncan Moore

M&A Deal Lead

Joined full-time on 22 August 2026 from the largest M&A advisory firm in the UK, owned by K3 Capital. As an ex-Director he managed teams of M&A advisors, analysts and associates, working daily with business owners, buyers and stakeholders on live acquisition deals. Selected from 260 applicants alongside colleagues from investment banking backgrounds, he brings that experience and network to lead the advisory bench across Building Services, Facilities Management, and Healthcare.

Read full bio

Joined full-time on 22 August 2026 from the largest M&A advisory firm in the UK, owned by K3 Capital. As an ex-Director he managed teams of M&A advisors, analysts and associates, working daily with business owners, buyers and stakeholders on live acquisition deals. Selected from 260 applicants alongside colleagues from investment banking backgrounds, he brings that experience and network to lead the advisory bench across Building Services, Facilities Management, and Healthcare.

Industry Specialist

Martin Watson

Senior Building Services & FM Advisor

Martin is one of the most well-connected figures in UK fire, security, building services and FM. He is Chairman of both the Fire Industry Association and the British Security Industry Association, the only person in the UK to hold both roles simultaneously. Martin spent over a decade in senior leadership at Mitie, latterly as Industry Liaison Director for its fire and security division, helping scale the business past £500m in revenue and playing a role in the £366m acquisition of Marlowe plc, which created one of the UK's largest compliance, fire and security services groups. He joined DealFlowAgent because owners in these sectors deserve a genuine sector-specialist advisor across valuation, business optimisation and buyer access. In recognition of his industry roles, he acts in a personal, non-partisan capacity.

Read full bio

Martin is one of the most well-connected figures in UK fire, security, building services and FM. He is Chairman of both the Fire Industry Association and the British Security Industry Association, the only person in the UK to hold both roles simultaneously. Martin spent over a decade in senior leadership at Mitie, latterly as Industry Liaison Director for its fire and security division, helping scale the business past £500m in revenue and playing a role in the £366m acquisition of Marlowe plc, which created one of the UK's largest compliance, fire and security services groups. He joined DealFlowAgent because owners in these sectors deserve a genuine sector-specialist advisor across valuation, business optimisation and buyer access. In recognition of his industry roles, he acts in a personal, non-partisan capacity.

Industry Partner

Nick Barker

Industry Partner, Hiring and Leadership

Nick leads FM Talent Partners, the facilities management and real estate leadership search firm, and is a leading specialist in building services and FM management talent. He partners with DealFlowAgent on two-way referrals: helping business owners and acquirers fill the key roles that decide whether a business is sellable, and introducing owners who are thinking about their next chapter to a team that knows their industry and their market. Key-person dependency is one of the two most common reasons a sale collapses, and Nick fixes it at source.

Read full bio

Nick leads FM Talent Partners, the facilities management and real estate leadership search firm, and is a leading specialist in building services and FM management talent. He partners with DealFlowAgent on two-way referrals: helping business owners and acquirers fill the key roles that decide whether a business is sellable, and introducing owners who are thinking about their next chapter to a team that knows their industry and their market. Key-person dependency is one of the two most common reasons a sale collapses, and Nick fixes it at source.

James Duboullay

Senior M&A Advisor

• •25+ years across investment banking, M&A and fundraising
• •Sector focus: essential services and software
• •Long-standing relationships with private equity buyers and growth funds
• •Personally advising DealFlowAgent founders for the past four years

Read full bio

• •25+ years across investment banking, M&A and fundraising
• •Sector focus: essential services and software
• •Long-standing relationships with private equity buyers and growth funds
• •Personally advising DealFlowAgent founders for the past four years

Emerson Patton

Sector Specialist: Building Services & Facilities Management

• •20+ years advising owners in building services, fire safety, HVAC, plumbing, and construction
• •Guided 200+ companies through growth, profit improvement, and exit planning
• •Builds equity value and operational structure long before a sale
• •Partners with DFA to prepare owners for exit while the advisory team runs the sale

Read full bio

• •20+ years advising owners in building services, fire safety, HVAC, plumbing, and construction
• •Guided 200+ companies through growth, profit improvement, and exit planning
• •Builds equity value and operational structure long before a sale
• •Partners with DFA to prepare owners for exit while the advisory team runs the sale

Kaya Kesici

M&A Advisor, Fire Safety, Security & Compliance

• •17 completed M&A transactions over the past six years across UK SME fire safety, security and compliance-led services
• •Sell-side and buy-side experience, buyer research, acquirer mapping, outreach and live process coordination
• •Information request lists, databook prep, IC-style summaries and EV-to-equity bridge work
• •Direct sector exposure across fire protection, security systems, CCTV, access control and intruder alarms

Read full bio

• •17 completed M&A transactions over the past six years across UK SME fire safety, security and compliance-led services
• •Sell-side and buy-side experience, buyer research, acquirer mapping, outreach and live process coordination
• •Information request lists, databook prep, IC-style summaries and EV-to-equity bridge work
• •Direct sector exposure across fire protection, security systems, CCTV, access control and intruder alarms

Previously

Ranger Fire & Security · Complete Building Services · Compliance Group

Joe Lewin

Founder, DealFlowAgent

• •22 completed M&A transactions
• •Direct relationships with hundreds of strategic and financial acquirers
• •Previously built a mobility and field services business to 30 staff and 6 UK warehouses, then sold via competitive process with an EY M&A partner
• •Raised £2m in funding; placed 3rd of 1,900 at OnStage (the "Y Combinator of Europe")
• •Full-stack developer of advanced agent systems and second-brain tooling for the M&A process

Read full bio

• •22 completed M&A transactions
• •Direct relationships with hundreds of strategic and financial acquirers
• •Previously built a mobility and field services business to 30 staff and 6 UK warehouses, then sold via competitive process with an EY M&A partner
• •Raised £2m in funding; placed 3rd of 1,900 at OnStage (the "Y Combinator of Europe")
• •Full-stack developer of advanced agent systems and second-brain tooling for the M&A process

Call: 020 7293 0327

Recruited Per Deal

Sector Expert

Industry-Specific Advisor

For every engagement we add a sector specialist from your industry to the core team: a 15–25 year operator or advisor with direct relationships in your niche. Recruited per deal so you get the right fit, not a generalist.

Read full bio

For every engagement we add a sector specialist from your industry to the core team: a 15–25 year operator or advisor with direct relationships in your niche. Recruited per deal so you get the right fit, not a generalist.

The bench is growing. Two senior M&A hires confirmed for late July 2026, selected from 200+ applicants out of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, EY, KPMG and leading boutique M&A firms. See open roles →

Proprietary Technology

The AI layer behind every advisor

Two in-house AI systems work alongside the human bench. They are software, not people, built and supervised by the advisory team.

AI Agent

Sage

AI Deal Concierge

Available 24/7. Monitors every signal in your deal and keeps the advisory team one step ahead. Trained on thousands of M&A transactions.

AI Agent

Sterling

Buy-Side Deal Origination Agent

Engages 13,000+ acquirers to surface live mandates and intent, then feeds your advisors with warm, ranked buyer matches.

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