Two publishers making two different kinds of statement
Accounting and bookkeeping practices are being acquired by platforms buying recurring revenue and staff capacity. An owner looking for a benchmark finds two published figures, and they are not the same kind of claim.
CT Acquisitions, verified 5 June 2026, publishes a range of 2.5x to 4x owner earnings for accounting and bookkeeping practices, scoped to owners with $200,000 to $2,000,000 of owner earnings.
Sundance Financial, updated March 2026 using 2025 transaction data, publishes a single figure: an average owner earnings multiple of 2.33x across 194 closed accounting and tax practice sales, drawn from transactions reported by brokers.
A range describes where a publisher believes deals fall. An average describes where a specific set of deals actually landed. Reading them as competing estimates of one number misses what each is telling you.
The average sits below the range
The two do not reconcile at face value. The average of 194 completed sales, 2.33x, falls below 2.5x, which is the bottom of the published range. Every value in the range is higher than the average of the transactions.
That is not a small discrepancy. It means an owner reading the range would anchor above what a large sample of real sales produced, and our estimator therefore reports this vertical as carrying conflicting evidence rather than combining the two. It leads with the sold figure and puts the advertised range beside it as an asking versus sold contrast. Worth noting what that looks like here: because the sold figure is a single average rather than a band, the top and the bottom of the range it produces are the same number. That is not a spread real transactions produced. It is one publisher's central estimate, and the estimator shows it as exactly that.
It is also worth noting where 2.33x sits against the same publisher's wider dataset. Sundance reports an average owner earnings multiple of approximately 2.5x across more than 9,500 small business transactions in 2025. Accounting practices, a sector often assumed to command a premium, came in slightly below that all-industry average in the same data.
Where the average does fit, and what that suggests
Read past the headline range and the two sources stop looking irreconcilable.
CT Acquisitions does not only publish 2.5x to 4x. It splits that band by what drives it. It attaches the top of the range, 3.5x to 4x, to practices with a high share of recurring monthly bookkeeping work. It attaches the bottom, 2x to 2.5x, to practices where the owner is the certified professional doing the work.
The average of 194 closed sales, 2.33x, sits inside that bottom tier.
We are not going to overstate what follows from that. It is one dataset and one publisher's tiering, and the two are not formally linked. But the observation is consistent with a straightforward reading: most accounting practices that change hands are owner dependent practices, and the transactions clustering there is what pulls the average below the headline band. The premium tier is real and most sellers are not in it.
If that reading is right, then the question for an owner is not which published number to trust. It is which tier their practice is actually in, and whether they can show it.
What separates the tiers is the same thing every time
The variable CT Acquisitions uses to split its range is the share of work that recurs under an arrangement rather than depending on the owner performing it. That is the same driver that separates the bands in managed services, in mechanical services, and in community association management.
For an accounting practice that means the difference between monthly bookkeeping and payroll engagements that continue regardless of who signs, and annual compliance work that returns because a particular partner has the relationship.
Both produce revenue. Only one of them survives the owner's departure without renegotiation, which is why a buyer prices them differently and why the record has to distinguish them clearly.
A note on how independent these sources are
Sundance states that its figures come from transactions reported by brokers to a marketplace dataset. CT Acquisitions publishes its own transaction observations and references industry datasets alongside them.
We treat them as independent because they are different organisations reaching their figures by different routes, which is the rule we apply throughout. It is worth knowing that this is independence by origin rather than two entirely separate transaction registers.
What a buyer examines
Diligence concentrates on which revenue recurs by agreement, and on whether clients belong to the firm or to a partner.
- Which engagements recur under a written agreement rather than by habit
- Client concentration, and which clients are attached to a specific partner
- Realisation rates, write off history, and how fees have moved
- Partner and staff agreements, including non solicit terms on a sale
- Workpaper completeness supporting prior positions and judgments
- Staff capacity and credentials relative to the work sold
- Software and workflow dependencies a buyer would have to absorb
What to do before you go to market
The tier question is answerable from your own records, and it is answerable now. Which engagements are under a written arrangement that renews without a conversation. Which clients would follow a departing partner. What share of revenue is monthly rather than seasonal.
Owners often assume they know these numbers and find, when they check, that the engagement letters, the billing history, and the client list tell three slightly different stories. A buyer finding that is a buyer discounting for uncertainty. An owner finding it first can fix it.
Verelume reads contracts, financials, and operating records and reports what the record supports, where documents conflict, and where a claim has no documentation behind it. For a practice preparing to sell, that is a direct answer to the question that determines which tier you are in.