Seven things decide it.

Most owners are told what their business is worth at the worst possible moment: when somebody offers to buy it, when a lender asks for three years, or when they need to stop and find they can't. The gap is rarely the revenue.

What's being priced isn't what the business earned last year. It is what it will keep earning once the person who built it has gone, and almost everything that determines that sits outside the profit and loss. It's also, in our experience, fixable, which is the only reason it's worth measuring.

31 questions about how the business runs, plus five about the business itself, in eight parts. Allow 45 minutes to an hour, most of it spent looking things up. None of them are difficult. Several are uncomfortable, which is the point.

• How the week runs, and how much of it needs you
• Who the customers are, and how much of next year is committed
• What stops when you're unreachable
• What exists in writing rather than in someone's head
• How current the numbers are, and who else can produce them

It's not a valuation and it doesn't say what anyone would pay. It's not financial, accounting, legal or other professional advice. It scores what you tell it: nobody checks the answers, inspects the books or telephones the accountant, so a careless half hour returns a careless number.