A few minutes of read-only financials and a short questionnaire surfaces what a buyer would discount your agency for — whether your earnings hold once a market recruiter's pay is charged for your own billing desk, how much of your gross profit is recurring contract headcount versus one-time perm fees, how concentrated you are in one client, and the payroll float they have to fund. Preview costs nothing.
Enter two numbers for an instant Staffing Agencies 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.
Most of your headline revenue is pass-through worker wages and payroll burden — not your money. A buyer strips revenue down to the gross-profit spread (bill rate minus pay rate and burden) and normalized EBITDA, so a '$10M agency' at a ~25% spread and single-digit margin is priced as a sub-$1M-earnings business. Quoting a revenue multiple on gross billings looks generous but isn't how the deal gets done — and the mismatch is the first thing diligence corrects.
If you personally close the business and hold the key client relationships, the cash flow may not survive your exit — a buyer is paying for revenue that can walk out the door. This drives heavy earn-outs and deferred consideration, and it's the single biggest discount on an agency. The fix a buyer wants to see: relationships moved onto a branch manager and a producing recruiter bench so the desk transfers.
Client concentration is a multiple-killer. A buyer pulls gross profit by customer and stress-tests retention; if one or two accounts carry the book, they price the risk that one leaves the year after close and breaks the thesis. Worker concentration — a few placed contractors or one labor pool you can't easily re-source — counts the same way. A diversified client and candidate base is what reads as defensible.
Direct-hire (perm) placement fees are one-time and lumpy — a buyer discounts them versus recurring contract headcount that renews, and a perm-heavy book trades nearer ~3x while a contingent-heavy one reaches ~6x. On top of that, you pay workers weekly while clients pay in 45+ days, so the payroll float is a real, ongoing cash drain a buyer funds — often a working-capital peg at close. DSO is the structural item they scrutinize.
Each lever is sized for a typical small agency, ~$6–8m gross billings but ~25% spread (~$1.6–2m gross profit) and ~8% ebitda on the net base after a market recruiter/branch-manager salary for the owner's billing desk — about $450K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Shift weight from one-time direct-hire fees toward contract/contingent headcount that bills recurring weekly hours, and pursue MSP/VMS/RPO program relationships with renewal terms. Recurring contract gross profit is the highest-multiple revenue — a contingent-heavy book reaches the top of the range while a perm-fee-dependent one sits near the floor.
adds about 0.4–0.8× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Move client relationships onto a branch/account manager and build a productive recruiter bench so billing doesn't rest on you. A desk that demonstrably runs without the owner is the difference between selling a job (the SDE basis) and selling a business (the higher EBITDA basis) — the biggest structural lever on price.
adds about 0.5–1.0× to your multiple · usually takes 18–36 months
Get the agency onto a current staffing ATS/CRM with documented sourcing and onboarding workflows, and make sure the payroll-funding line can carry added headcount. It's a light-asset business — the 'capex' analog is the tech stack, and the real capital requirement is the weekly-payroll-vs-45-day-collection float a buyer funds.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 3–12 months
Tighten markup discipline by client and role, reweight toward higher-spread segments (IT, healthcare, engineering, finance & accounting run materially above commodity light-industrial), control overtime/premium pay, and tighten DSO. Each widens the spread and lifts owner-normalized EBITDA on the net base.
adds about 0.2–0.5× to your multiple · usually takes 6–18 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 staffing agencies on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Staffing Agencies benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~55% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~25% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~2% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 15% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~6% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 2.8–11.2× 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.
Staffing M&A is active and segmented — who pays the most depends on your niche and how recurring your headcount is.
The memo maps which pool fits an agency 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.
Read-only, enforced in our code: every call we make to QuickBooks is a read. Nothing leaves unless you choose to share it.
Disconnect or delete anytime. Read our privacy policy →
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Staffing Agencies businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 2.8× to 11.2× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 5.5×. 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.
On your gross-profit spread and earnings — not your gross billings. Most of your revenue is pass-through worker wages and payroll burden, so a buyer strips it down to the spread (bill rate minus pay rate and burden) and normalized EBITDA. A small owner-operated agency is priced on SDE (your cash flow before a market salary for whoever replaces your billing desk), roughly 1.6–3.8x; a larger, recruiter-run agency is priced on EBITDA, roughly 4.5–7x for light-industrial and 6–10x+ for high-spread IT/healthcare or MSP-program books. Your contract-vs-perm mix and client concentration move you up or down. Every figure traces back to your books.
Because it's calculated on gross billings, which are mostly pass-through wages — not the agency's money. Industry data shows a staffing revenue multiple near 0.3–0.6x, which looks tiny precisely because ~75–80% of billings in commodity staffing is worker pay and burden you pass straight through. On the gross-profit spread, the real multiple is several times higher, which is why a sophisticated buyer anchors on EBITDA (or the spread), never on revenue. Selling on billings is the central trap in this trade.
Recurring contract/contingent headcount versus lumpy perm fees; a book that transfers without you as the top biller; low client and worker concentration; a higher-spread niche (IT, healthcare, engineering) over commodity light-industrial; a productive recruiter bench; and a tight DSO so the payroll float a buyer funds is smaller. 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.