Five minutes of QuickBooks read-only and a few quick questions surfaces what a buyer would discount your tree-service business for — how much of revenue is one-time removals versus recurring plant-health-care, the bucket-truck and chipper replacement bill they'll subtract from cash flow, and whether the work survives you stepping off the bid. Preview is free; $499 for the full memo.
Enter two numbers for an instant Tree Service 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.
Removal and storm work is episodic, weather-driven, and hard to underwrite — a buyer can't bank on lightning striking next year. Recurring plant-health-care programs and multi-year commercial or municipal maintenance contracts are what they pay up for. A book that's mostly one-off removals gets priced as the lumpy, repeat-every-January revenue it is.
Bucket trucks, chippers, stump grinders, and cranes are the balance sheet in this trade — and a buyer normalizes the replacement bill straight off cash flow. A worn-out crane or a bucket truck past its service life is a six-figure line item they'll assume is coming unless you document the fleet's age, condition, and replacement plan.
If you do the bidding and you're the certified arborist the crews depend on, a buyer sees key-man risk on two fronts at once. A search-funder or SBA-backed buyer is underwriting whether the company can quote and climb without you — and discounts hard when the answer is no.
Tree work is high-hazard, and your experience-modification rate, claims history, and crew safety record feed directly into a buyer's insurance cost and risk view. A poor safety record or thin documentation raises their carried cost and lowers what they'll pay.
Each lever is sized for a typical $2m–$5m revenue tree-care firm, removal + recurring plant-health-care mix — about $500K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Plant-health-care programs (fertilization, pest and disease management, seasonal treatment plans) and multi-year commercial or municipal maintenance contracts convert episodic removal revenue into a contracted base. It's the clearest path to a higher multiple — it's exactly the recurring profile the national consolidators are buying.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–18 months
Produce a per-asset schedule — bucket trucks, chippers, stump grinders, cranes — with age, hours, condition, and replacement year. Buyers underwrite the documented plan, not the worst case; a credible schedule turns an assumed capex haircut into a known, financeable number.
adds about 0.2–0.4× to your multiple · usually takes 3–9 months
Promote or hire a general manager and a credentialed lead arborist who carry the bidding and the field oversight. Moving estimating and crew leadership off your shoulders — and getting ISA-certified depth on the team — is what lets the multiple climb toward the top of the range.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 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 tree-care companies on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Tree Service benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~25% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~45% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~15% | 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 | ~5% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 3.0–6.0× 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.
Tree care is in an active consolidation wave. National platforms — SavATree (backed by Apax funds), Davey Tree, Bartlett Tree Experts, and PE-backed roll-ups like TreeServe (Soundcore Capital) and Monster Tree Service — acquire established firms for crews, recurring plant-health-care books, and metro density. Regional strategics buy for route efficiency, and individual or SBA-financed buyers compete for owner-operated shops. The platforms pay up for recurring revenue, ISA-certified staff depth, a modern fleet, and manager-run operations. 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 Tree Service businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 3.0× to 6.0× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 4.0×. 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 tree-service valuation begins where a buyer's QoE team begins: your reported earnings as the starting line. From there, the normalizing adjustments — owner add-backs, family wages, personal vehicles, one-time items — each tied to a specific QuickBooks transaction, producing your normalized EBITDA. Against that we apply a tree-care-specific multiple grounded in recent small-business sale transactions in the trade. The factors that move it up or down: the recurring plant-health-care and contract share versus one-time removals, fleet age and the replacement capex a buyer will normalize, customer and referral-source concentration, your safety and insurance record, and whether the business can quote and climb without you. Every figure traces back to your books — never a revenue rule-of-thumb.
Recurring plant-health-care programs and commercial or municipal maintenance contracts, a documented modern fleet, ISA-certified staff depth, a clean safety and insurance record, and a business that runs without the owner. 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.