Accounting / Bookkeeping / Tax Firm Acquisition & SBA Underwriting Financial Model

Description
Most accounting-firm templates are startup or operating forecasts, and most brokers headline the standard-rate fee schedule and anchor on '1x gross fees'. But accountants write work down — you collect a realization rate, not the rack rate — and the seller is usually the top biller whose clients may not all stay after the sale. This 5-year, SBA-lender-ready model reads an independent accounting / bookkeeping / tax firm the way a disciplined buyer and a bank do.

• Realization-rate bridge: four service lines (recurring compliance / CAAS, annual tax prep, non-recurring advisory, attest), each quoted at a standard fee, written down by its realization rate to net collected fees, then at its own gross margin. The blended realization (~89%) is the honesty number: a book quoted at standard rates overstates by ~11%.
• Recurring quality and the summer cash trough: a tax practice collects most fees in a ~14-week Q1 spike while the loan amortises over twelve months; the model counts the months where collections do not cover the bank (four in a tax-season practice vs zero in a year-round CAAS firm).
• True vs naive DSCR: a market-rate producer replaces the owner-biller and an explicit tech and transition reserve comes out, so the true DSCR (1.43x) sits next to the broker's naive one (2.88x).
• The down-case that matters: if post-sale client retention lands at the profession's 75-80% average instead of 90%, plus AI and fee compression, DSCR drops to 0.66x, below the 1.25x lender floor, and the earnout clawback trips.
• SBA 7(a) capital stack with a seller-note full-standby vs amortizing lever, the DSCR gate, a goodwill $500k valuation-trigger flag, and a 5-year cash-on-cash and equity multiple (no IRR, deliberately).
  
  

Ten Excel sheets (every calculation a formula, Google-Sheets-safe, no macros), a 25-page PDF user guide, three firm profiles (Solo Tax-Practice / Balanced Compliance Firm / CAAS-Advisory Forward), and a benchmarks sheet with sourced ranges. Educational planning tool, not financial, legal, tax or investment advice.