IT services and MSPs
Two publishers agree on your trade. A buyer will still read every agreement.
Managed services is heavily consolidated, and it is the one trade in our set where the published record holds together. Two independent publishers report on owner earnings and their ranges overlap. They also agree on what moves a business within that range, which is the share of revenue under a genuine recurring agreement. That makes the contract base the whole of diligence.
The record
What your record already holds.
- Managed service agreements, with term, scope, and renewal provisions
- Service level commitments and any credits owed against them
- Recurring revenue reporting, separated from project and hardware work
- Ticket and incident history by client
- Vendor and distributor agreements, including licence resale terms
- Security certifications, attestations, and audit results
- Technician certifications and staffing coverage
The questions
The questions worth answering.
- “How much revenue sits under a signed recurring agreement rather than a rolling arrangement?”
- “What do our service level commitments actually oblige us to, and have we met them?”
- “Which clients are on legacy terms we would not offer today?”
- “How concentrated is revenue among our largest accounts?”
- “Which licences and vendor agreements transfer on a change of control?”
- “What do our security attestations cover, and when were they last tested?”
Key-person risk
When someone leaves, the reasoning shouldn’t leave with them.
In smaller providers the owner is often the senior engineer and the person clients escalate to. A buyer prices whether service continuity depends on that individual, and whether the knowledge behind each client environment is documented or carried in one head. Verelume is designed to make that answerable from the record.
High-stakes moments
When the record has to answer.
A platform approach
Consolidators buying for recurring revenue test the agreement base first. They separate contracted revenue from work that merely repeats, and they price the two very differently.
Service level exposure
Commitments made in agreements create obligations that a buyer will quantify. The record either shows performance against them or leaves the question open.
Security and compliance claims
Attestations and certifications are checked against what was actually assessed and when. A claim that outruns the evidence behind it is found quickly here.
The published record
What the sources actually say, and what they do not.
This is the exception in our set. Two independent publishers report on the same measure and their ranges overlap materially. Our estimator leads with what managed service providers actually sold for, drawn from the transaction source rather than from the advisory one, and shows the full record with both publishers named beneath it. Worth reading closely, though: one range is considerably wider than the other, and both publishers attribute that width to the same variable, which is how much revenue sits under a genuine recurring agreement. Agreement between publishers on the range is not agreement about your business. It moves the question from what the industry trades for to where inside that range your contract base puts you.
3x to 5.5x owner earnings
The Deal Sheet. Applies to businesses under $5M of revenue where the owner actively works in the business. 14 March 2026.
3x to 7x owner earnings, dependent on recurring revenue share
CT Acquisitions. Applies to providers under $1M of revenue. verified 1 July 2026.
Verelume does not average these publishers or choose between them. Where they disagree, the disagreement is the finding.
What diligence concentrates on here
- Contracted recurring revenue, separated from work that merely repeats
- Agreement terms on renewal, termination, and assignment
- Service level commitments and performance against them
- Client concentration among the largest accounts
- Licence and vendor agreements that transfer on a change of control
- Security attestations and what they actually covered
- Owner dependence in escalation and client environments
What Verelume does not do
Verelume does not assess security posture, certify compliance, make technical judgments, or provide legal advice. It helps your team find and understand what your own records say, with the sources attached, and flags where documents conflict or where a claim has no documentation behind it.
Related use cases
See what your it services and managed service provider's record can answer.
Start with a founder-led Diligence Readiness Assessment, Founding price $5,500, with the Verelume platform included. See all three ways to engage.