Specialist HVAC Business Brokers, United Kingdom
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Normalising your profit

The add-backs buyers accept and reject

Three tests for every add-back when you sell an HVAC business, with a one-page schedule for your own figures.

For sellers 15 pages 15-minute read Checked Mon 12th Oct 2026

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Who this guide is for

For the owner of a heating, ventilation or air conditioning business who takes a modest salary, still works on the tools or owns the unit the vans leave from. It helps you work out the profit a buyer can be shown before a buyer works it out for you.

What you will take from it

  • Keep the pay for your work apart from your return as owner, and price the engineer's job and the manager's job from published pay figures.
  • Put every adjustment through three tests: is the cost real, will it stop when you leave, and what will a new owner pay instead.
  • Normalising cuts both ways, so a market rent and ageing vans go on the schedule beside your add-backs.

What is inside

  1. Why your accounts show the wrong profit for a sale
  2. Meet Brackenfold Climate Services
  3. Your pay is not your profit
  4. What each of your jobs costs to replace
  5. One-off costs that come round again
  6. Personal costs the business has paid
  7. Premises, vehicles and family on the payroll
  8. The costs your accounts leave out
  9. Putting the schedule together
  10. What the public record shows about who stays

The tool: add-back schedule

One page with a line for each adjustment: the amount, the evidence you hold, a question a buyer can ask and a tick when a document backs it. Type into the PDF and save it, or print it.

It comes as its own file as well as a page of the guide.

Two pages from the guide

Page 11 of the guide
Page 11 of 15
Page 13 of the guide
Page 13 of 15

Get the guide

Tell us who you are and the guide opens on this page, with the add-back schedule as its own file.

PDF 15 pages 466 KB

Your details go to Simon Read's team at HVAC Business Sales. We do not sell them or share them for marketing. Privacy policy.

Simon Read

Prepared by Simon Read

Founder & Managing Director, Reads Advice Partners Ltd

Simon founded Reads M&A Advisory to specialise in trades such as HVAC, electrical, fire safety and facilities management, and has spent many years selling businesses to independent buyers, trade companies and private equity-backed groups across the UK.

Checked Mon 12th Oct 2026. The Autumn Budget is scheduled for Wed 28th Oct 2026, and we review every guide after it.

Start with a free first conversation: 01285 704466. Meet the team.

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