Five minutes of QuickBooks read-only and a few quick questions surfaces what a buyer would discount your solar-PV installation business for — how much of the selling only you can do, how dependent you are on one financing partner and a single lead channel, and how much of your revenue rides federal and state incentives a buyer won't assume repeat. Preview is free; $499 for the full memo.
Enter two numbers for an instant Solar 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.
In most solar shops the owner runs the consultation, builds the proposal, and closes the homeowner — and often personally owns the lead relationships. When the owner is the sales engine, a buyer sees revenue that walks at the closing table, not a transferable book. This owner-as-closer dependence is the single biggest reason these businesses get discounted.
Solar demand has leaned heavily on the federal residential tax credit and state net-metering rules — and both have been cut back. U.S. residential installations fell sharply in 2024 and contracted further through 2025 as the residential credit phased out. A buyer normalizes the next, lower-incentive year rather than your recent peak, and prices the policy risk directly into the multiple.
A book where most financed sales run through a single lender, or most leads come from one paid channel, is fragile — that partner's fee change, credit tightening, or failure throttles your close rate overnight. Several large solar lenders and installers failed in 2024–2025. A buyer prices concentration in financing and lead sources as a structural risk, not a relationship strength.
Production guarantees and 10–25-year workmanship and equipment warranties are future obligations that stay with the business after the sale. A buyer wants to see whether a reserve exists, how claims have trended, and what the tail liability looks like. An unquantified warranty and O&M book is a line a buyer will haircut hard until it's funded and documented.
Each lever is sized for a typical $3m–$5m revenue solar-pv installer, residential + light-commercial mix — about $400K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Attach paid monitoring and O&M plans to every install, win service and repair work on other installers' orphaned systems, and onboard multiple financing partners so no single lender controls revenue. A counter-cyclical service base plus diversified financing is what turns an incentive-driven install shop into a business a buyer can underwrite through the cycle.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Hire and train closers, document the consultative proposal-and-financing process, make the lead engine a system rather than your Rolodex, and promote an operations manager over permitting and install. Taking the selling and lead generation off your own shoulders is the single biggest lever to turn 'buying the owner' into 'buying a business' — and it's what lets the multiple climb toward an EBITDA basis.
adds about 0.4–0.7× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Clean accrual books with job-level costing, financing-dealer fees broken out, a documented add-back trail, an explicit warranty and O&M reserve, and a per-asset fleet schedule let a buyer underwrite the business with confidence — and protect the price from a mid-diligence re-trade.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 3–6 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 solar installers on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Solar benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~8% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~30% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~10% | 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 | ~0% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 2.5–4.5× 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.
Solar-PV installation sits apart because a buyer underwrites policy and financing risk first — caution that intensified after U.S. residential demand contracted and several large installers and lenders failed in 2024–2025. The published double-digit solar multiples belong to utility-scale developers and equipment makers, not owner-operated installers, who transact in a conservative specialty-trade range. Regional electrical and home-services strategics acquire installers with a durable service base and diversified financing; individual buyers acquire smaller owner-sold shops. What separates them is whether the selling, lead flow, financing, and warranty obligations survive the founder's exit and an incentive change. The memo maps which buyer fits your size.
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 Solar businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 2.5× to 4.5× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 3.5×. 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.
A solar valuation begins where a buyer's QoE team begins: your reported earnings. From there, the normalizing adjustments — owner add-backs, family wages, one-time items, and financing-dealer fees stated explicitly — each tied to a specific QuickBooks transaction, producing your normalized EBITDA, with the warranty and O&M obligation treated as a reserve. Against that we apply a conservative, trade-specific multiple from specialty-installer sale transactions — not the double-digit public-company solar multiples, which reflect utility-scale developers, not installers. The factors that move it: owner-as-salesperson dependence, financing and lead-source concentration, how much revenue rides incentives a buyer won't assume repeat, and whether a durable service base and trained team transfer. Every figure traces back to your books.
A durable O&M, monitoring, and service base on the installed fleet; multiple financing partners rather than one; diversified lead sources with a strong review moat; a balanced residential, commercial, and service mix that doesn't ride a single incentive; a sales process and team that close without the owner; a funded warranty reserve; and clean books with financing fees broken out. The diagnostic scores where you sit on each and shows what moving up would be worth.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.