Roofing buyers look at things other trade buyers don't — connect QuickBooks (read-only) and answer a few questions, and you'll see what they'll price: the storm-year revenue they'll normalize off your run-rate, the insurance-AR aging they'll question, the workers-comp safety rating (EMR) they'll grade, and the Sales-Rep book-of-business they'll worry about walking. Preview is free; $499 for the full memo.
Enter two numbers for an instant Roofing ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
If 30%+ of last year's revenue came from a single hail or wind event in your metro, a buyer treats that revenue as one-time and prices off the non-storm baseline. Storm-restoration revenue isn't bad — but if you can't show 3+ years of steady non-storm trend underneath, the buyer assumes the storm year was the peak, not the floor. This is the single biggest discount applied to roofing businesses with strong recent years.
If you write the estimates, file the insurance supplements, and hold the top property-manager relationships personally, a buyer sees risk rather than a business. Roofing is uniquely owner-concentrated because the insurance-supplement knowledge (which carriers respond to which language, what photo documentation works) often lives in one person's head. Without a documented Sales Manager + Production Manager, search-fund and SBA-backed buyers discount hard for it.
Insurance work ages on a fundamentally different schedule than retail (60–180 days while carriers process supplements), so how long you take to get paid (your DSO) looks like a problem when it's actually normal for the segment. If you can't show insurance-AR separately, the buyer assumes collection problems and discounts working capital — even if your eventual collection rate is 95%+.
Roofing Sales Reps build personal books worth $500K–$2M in annual revenue. Without non-solicit agreements signed BEFORE deal talks, a buyer prices the leakage risk — what happens when your top closer goes to a competitor with the customer list. This is one of the most fixable buyer attacks, and one most owners haven't addressed.
Roofing has the highest workers-comp rates of any trade (residential fall risk + commercial low-slope hazards). An Experience Modification Rate (EMR) above 1.0 directly increases your insurance cost AND signals safety culture issues to a buyer. EMR is benchmarked against your peers — under 0.85 is excellent, over 1.0 is a red flag a sophisticated buyer will price.
Each lever is sized for a typical $3m–$6m revenue roofing contractor, residential reroof + insurance restoration — about $700K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
TPO/EPDM/modified-bit maintenance contracts at $0.08–$0.18/sqft/yr are the recurring-revenue story that reroof-only shops can't show a buyer. A 50,000 sqft commercial install can carry $4,000–9,000/yr of maintenance that renews 15+ years. Buyers pay a 1–2x multiple premium for the recurring base.
adds about 0.3–0.5× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Roofing requires three separated functions to read as buyer-ready: a Production Manager (runs crews + schedules + safety), a Sales Manager (estimating + supplements + sales coaching), and the owner. Owner-operators who conflate at least two get priced at the bottom of the range.
adds about 0.3–0.5× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Most roofers leave $1,500–$5,000 per insurance job on the table by not filing supplements consistently. Documenting the playbook (carrier-specific language, photo standards, escalation paths) raises both your gross margin and your buyer-readiness — the institutional knowledge is now portable, not a key-person risk.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 3–9 months
Roofing-specific bookkeeping (insurance AR separately aged, manufacturer rebates accrued monthly, accrual-basis with construction revenue recognition) protects the earnings number a buyer will pay you for. This is the most under-rated lever — a few weeks of bookkeeper work can prevent a 5–15% diligence re-trade.
adds about 0.1–0.2× to your multiple · usually takes 1–3 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade roofing contractors on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Roofing benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~10% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~30% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~12% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 20% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~5% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 2.2–4.7× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Roofing is one of the most actively consolidated trades in the country, with private-equity-backed platforms acquiring established shops as add-ons across nearly every major metro. The biggest consolidation activity is in residential reroof + insurance restoration; commercial low-slope (with its maintenance-contract recurring story) attracts a premium. Independent sponsors and search funds also buy owner-operated shops they intend to professionalize (typically $1–3M EBITDA range), and regional strategics buy for crew capacity and route density. The memo maps which would actually look at a company your size and how each tends to structure the deal.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Roofing businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 2.2× to 4.7× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 3.2×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
We start from your reported earnings and normalize them carefully for the things buyers price differently in roofing: storm-year revenue gets separated from non-storm baseline; insurance-restoration AR gets aged on its own schedule (60–180 days is normal for the segment, not a collection problem); workers-comp EMR feeds into the operating cost reality. Then we apply a roofing-specific multiple weighted for your residential reroof / commercial low-slope / insurance restoration mix. The factors a buyer will grade: storm-year sensitivity, commercial maintenance contracts (if any), Production Manager + Sales Manager separation from owner, insurance-supplement discipline, and Sales-Rep non-solicit coverage. Every figure ties back to your books.
Commercial low-slope maintenance contracts (recurring revenue), a Sales Manager + Production Manager layer separating the owner from day-to-day, a documented insurance-supplement playbook, low workers-comp EMR (under 0.85), and clean books with insurance-AR aged separately. The diagnostic scores where you sit on each and shows what moving up would be worth.
Both. The storm-event revenue makes the top line look great but a buyer will normalize it out and price off the non-storm baseline. The fix isn't to hide it — it's to show 3+ years of steady non-storm trend underneath so the baseline is clearly the floor and the storm year reads as upside. We model this directly in your memo.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.