Methodology
How the Exit Readiness Score and Owner Dependency Index are calculated
Both numbers are arithmetic, not opinion dressed up as a number. This page shows the exact weights, thresholds and formula, so you can check the result by hand.
The Exit Readiness Score
A figure from 0 to 100. It is a weighted average of eight category scores, each also scored from 0 to 100. The weights reflect how heavily each area is scrutinised when someone else takes over a business.
| Category | Weight |
|---|---|
Financial Readiness Clean, consistent books a buyer's accountant can verify | 20% |
Owner Independence How much critical work still requires you personally | 20% |
Customer Transferability Whether customers stay when the owner changes | 15% |
Operational Documentation Whether the way the work gets done is written down | 15% |
Management & Employees A layer that runs the business day to day | 10% |
Revenue Quality Recurring, diversified, predictable revenue | 10% |
Legal & Contract Readiness Signed agreements with customers, staff and suppliers | 5% |
Transition Readiness A successor, a timeline and realistic deal terms | 5% |
A worked example
Multiply each category score by its weight, then add the results.
| Category | Score | Weight | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Readiness | 62 | 20% | 12.4 |
| Owner Independence | 24 | 20% | 4.8 |
| Customer Transferability | 38 | 15% | 5.7 |
| Operational Documentation | 30 | 15% | 4.5 |
| Management & Employees | 45 | 10% | 4.5 |
| Revenue Quality | 55 | 10% | 5.5 |
| Legal & Contract Readiness | 40 | 5% | 2.0 |
| Transition Readiness | 20 | 5% | 1.0 |
| Total, rounded | 40.4 → 40 | ||
If a category has no evidence yet, it is left out rather than counted as zero. The points are then divided by the share of the weighting that was actually scored, so a partly complete assessment is not unfairly punished.
The four bands
| Score | Band |
|---|---|
| 85 – 100 | Exit Ready |
| 70 – 84 | Nearly Ready |
| 55 – 69 | Needs Preparation |
| 0 – 54 | Not Transferable Yet |
The Owner Dependency Index
The share of your critical workflows that still contain at least one step only you can do. A reading of 85% means that in roughly eighty-five out of a hundred critical paths through the business, the work stops at you.
- In the free baseline it is derived arithmetically from your answers: 100 minus a blend of your Owner Independence score (70%) and your Operational Documentation score (30%).
- After the full Exit Interview it is assessed from the workflows you actually described — who does each step, and which steps route through you.
It is deliberately a separate number from the readiness score. A business can have clean books, signed contracts and good revenue quality and still be almost impossible to hand over.
What these numbers do not do
- No valuation, no multiple, no estimated sale price.
- No promise that a given score raises what a buyer will pay.
- Not a certified appraisal, an audit, or legal or tax advice.
Honest limits
- The free baseline is twenty multiple-choice questions. It is an estimate and it will be wrong at the edges.
- The full score is graded from what you said during the Exit Interview. It is an informed judgement about transferability, not a verified inspection of your records.
- Both numbers only move when the underlying facts change and you regenerate the report.