Business Succession & Exit Planning
You’ve built it. Now plan what comes next.
Every business owner exits. The only variables are when, how, and whether it was planned.
Unplanned exits happen too — illness, a partner dispute, an offer that arrives before you’re ready, or simply running out of enthusiasm at sixty-three. In every one of those, the owner takes less than the business was worth.
Use the planning runway to work on value, structure and readiness before the handover.
Two different jobs
Succession and exit aren’t the same thing.
They need different preparation.
Succession is mostly about whether the business can run without you and whether the successor can afford to buy in. Exit is mostly about whether a stranger can verify what you’re claiming and whether the structure lets you keep the proceeds.
To a child, a manager, a partner. The business continues and you step back, often gradually.
A trade sale, a sale to a competitor, a wind-down.
Succession transfers responsibility. An exit transfers ownership. Plan the route that fits.
Plenty of owners plan for one and end up doing the other, which is an argument for preparing the business rather than the transaction.
What you walk away with
Three things decide it
Owners focus almost entirely on the first. The second and third routinely make more difference to the outcome.
- The price
What a buyer will pay, which is driven by earnings and by risk — customer concentration, owner dependence, documented systems, recurring revenue, verifiable records.
- The tax
What you keep after the ATO. This is decided years earlier by your structure, not at the point of sale.
- The terms
Earnouts, deferred payments, restraint clauses, how long you’re required to stay. A headline price with three years of earnout attached is a different transaction from cash at settlement.
The honest timeframe
Why three to five years
Because most of the things that increase what you clear, net of tax, take that long to change.
Start three months out and you’re not planning — you’re negotiating from whatever position you happen to be in.
- Owner dependence
Hiring and training someone to do what only you do, then genuinely stepping back.
- Customer concentration
Fixing it means winning new clients, which takes as long as it takes.
- Restructuring
It carries its own consequences, and doing it in the shadow of a sale attracts scrutiny.
- Three years of records
Clean and consistent is what a buyer’s due diligence wants to see.
- Documented systems
Unglamorous and slow, and it visibly raises what a buyer will pay.
Enacted 26 June 2026
The 1 July 2027 change, and why timing now matters
Whether a sale completes before or after 1 July 2027 is now a live question with real money attached.
For anyone contemplating a sale in the next few years, that is a number to be modelled rather than guessed at.
- The 50% discount goes
Replaced by cost base indexation from 1 July 2027 for individuals and trusts, plus a 30% minimum tax on capital gains made by Australian resident individuals.
- Indexation is worth less here
Far less than a 50% discount when the asset has a low cost base. Internally built goodwill has almost no cost base, which describes most owner-operated businesses.
- It bites whether you sell or not
Assets held on 30 June 2027 are deemed sold immediately before 1 July 2027 and reacquired at market value, so anyone still holding the business through that date needs defensible valuation evidence as at then.
Small Business CGT ConcessionsThe concessions that survive, and what they’re worth on a business sale.
The options
The five ways out
Worth knowing the options, because owners often assume there’s only one.
Which of these is available to you is largely determined by how the business is structured and built, and that can be influenced years in advance.
Trade sale
Selling to a competitor, a supplier or a larger operator in your industry. Usually the highest price, because a strategic buyer is paying for synergies you don’t have. Also the most invasive due diligence.
Sale to a third party
A private buyer wanting to own and run the business. Broader market, generally lower price, and financing is more often the constraint that kills the deal.
Management buyout
Selling to the people already running it. They know what they’re buying, so the diligence is easier — but they usually can’t fund it without vendor finance, which means you’re still exposed for years.
Family succession
The business continues in the family. Rarely the highest price and frequently the right answer for other reasons.
Wind-down
Collecting what’s owed, selling the assets, closing the doors. Undervalued as an option. For some service businesses with no transferable goodwill, it may net more than a sale would.
The hardest version
Succession inside a family
The commercial and the personal are the same conversation.
The recurring problems aren’t technical: one child works in the business and two don’t, the successor can’t fund the buy-in, the founder says they’re stepping back and doesn’t. What helps is separating the questions and answering them in order.
- The value
What the business is actually worth.
- The successor’s means
What they can afford to pay, and over what period.
- The other children
How they are treated fairly, which is not the same as equally.
- The founder’s income
What is needed to live on once the business is handed over.
- The handover
When control actually changes hands, and what triggers it.
None of that is comfortable. It’s considerably less uncomfortable than doing it after a death or during a dispute.
Headline versus banked
What it costs to sell
Owners tend to think about the price and not the deductions from it, and the gap is larger than expected.
Planning affects every one of these — a clean structure with good records costs less to sell and attracts fewer price adjustments during due diligence.
- Broker
A broker or corporate adviser, if you use one.
- Legal fees
On the sale agreement, and they rise sharply if the structure is complicated.
- Advice
Accounting and tax, all the way through the process.
- Restructuring
Anything done in preparation for the sale itself.
- The tax
Usually much the largest item on this list.
Before a buyer looks
Getting the business ready for due diligence
A buyer’s advisers will look for reasons to reduce the price, and they will find whatever you haven’t fixed.
Each of these is fixable in advance and expensive to discover mid-transaction.
- Contracts
Ones that were never signed.
- Entitlements
Employee balances that don’t reconcile.
- Related parties
Transactions with no documentation behind them.
- Division 7A
A loan balance nobody addressed.
- Leases
Ones carrying change-of-control clauses.
- Key staff
People with no employment agreements in place.
The pattern is consistent: nothing found in due diligence is ever neutral. It either reduces the price or adds a warranty you’ll be carrying for years afterwards.
Internal Audit & Risk ManagementFinding these before a buyer does.
First step
Where we start
With the number, because nothing else can be decided without it.
Then the gap: what the business is worth now, what you need it to be worth, and what has to change in between. Then the structure and the tax. Then the timeline. And then, ideally, several years of ordinary work before anything is on the market.
Business ValuationFour levels, from an estimate through to a conclusion of value that stands up under scrutiny.
Each level adds depth. The purpose of the valuation determines the scope.
Start with a consultation
Tell us roughly when you’re thinking.
Tell us roughly when you’re thinking and what shape you want the exit to take. We’ll tell you what needs to happen and how long it will take. If you’re three to five years out, that’s the right time to have this conversation.
Book a consultationAnd if you’ve had an unsolicited approach and don’t know what to do with it, that’s worth a conversation this week rather than next month. Approaches are often the beginning of a process the buyer has already planned and you haven’t.