Free Consultation
Book a Free Consultation
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Level 3 fair values, goodwill impairment tests and purchase price allocations for Gold Coast boards, finance teams and fund managers, set out so the auditor can trace each input from its source to the conclusion.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
When a figure in the accounts is an estimate, not a transaction, the auditor tests it under ASA 540 and expects valuation evidence behind it. For Gold Coast reporting entities that usually means AASB 13 fair value of unlisted holdings, an AASB 136 recoverable amount for goodwill, an AASB 3 purchase price allocation or AASB 2 grant-date values.
A set of accounts mixes facts and judgements. Cash at bank is a fact. The worth of a minority stake in a private company, whether the goodwill paid for a run of acquisitions can still be supported, which intangibles were actually acquired and what staff options cost are judgements, and each one rests on a valuation. ASA 540, the auditing standard for accounting estimates, requires the auditor to test them, and for a Gold Coast finance team reporting to an audit partner in Southport or Bundall that testing has become more detailed with every reporting cycle.
A poor estimate costs more than a difficult audit. A fund that holds an unlisted Gold Coast technology business above its fair value reports returns it has not made and may collect fees on them. A goodwill impairment recognised a year late inflates profit in the meantime and can trip a lending covenant when it finally arrives. A Yatala manufacturer acquired and booked with the whole premium as goodwill, instead of spread across customer contracts, the brand and its production know-how, carries the wrong amortisation and the wrong impairment base for years.
The reporting entities on the Gold Coast give these questions a particular shape. Health, allied health, childcare and trade services groups that grow by buying practices and businesses one at a time end up with a string of purchase price allocations and goodwill spread across many small units. Tourism, hospitality and accommodation operators test their assets against forecasts that swing with seasons, events and interstate travel. Construction groups positioning for work around the 2032 Games carry acquired order books and contracts, marine manufacturers in the Coomera precinct carry plant and brands, and registered charities preparing general purpose statements apply the same standards. ASIC's financial reporting reviews have for years named asset impairment and the values placed on unlisted assets among the areas it examines most closely.
We prepare these valuations for CFOs, audit committees, fund managers and the auditors who review them. Each engagement is planned around the questions the auditor will raise, because a valuation that cannot get through that conversation has not done what it was for.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Nearly every reporting valuation sits under one of four standards. They ask different questions, measure on different bases and are audited in different ways, so the first step is always to pin down which standard applies and to what unit of account.
Fair value is an exit price: the amount a market participant would pay for the asset, or demand to assume the liability, in an orderly transaction on the measurement date. The standard ranks inputs in three levels, and nearly all private company holdings are Level 3, where the entity's own assumptions drive the answer and the disclosures are heaviest. A recent arm's length raise is a strong reference point, but it has to be calibrated and rolled forward at each reporting date, not just repeated.
Goodwill and indefinite-life intangibles are tested annually, and other assets whenever there is an indicator, such as market capitalisation falling below net assets. For each cash-generating unit, the carrying amount is compared with the recoverable amount, which is the greater of value in use and fair value less costs of disposal. Value in use relies on board-approved forecasts, normally covering no more than five years, for the assets in their current condition, discounted at a pre-tax rate.
After completion, the consideration is assigned at fair value to the identifiable assets and liabilities acquired, including intangibles the seller never booked: customer relationships, brands, technology, contracts on hand and restraint covenants. Goodwill is whatever is left. Contingent consideration such as an earn-out is recognised at acquisition-date fair value and, if it is a liability, remeasured through profit or loss until it is paid.
Options and performance rights granted to employees are measured at grant-date fair value using an option pricing model and expensed over the vesting period. How that accounting figure differs from the Division 83A tax value, and why the gap matters for a growing Gold Coast company, is covered on our employee share scheme page.
Groups that buy clinics, childcare centres, trade businesses or management rights one at a time need a purchase price allocation for each deal and a sensible home for each slice of goodwill. AASB 136 allocates goodwill to the lowest level at which management monitors it, and never to a unit larger than an operating segment. Drawn too widely, one unit lets strong sites hide weak ones; drawn too narrowly, a soft few months at a single location becomes a write-down. Agreeing the units with the auditor before the first test, and recording why they were chosen, heads off most of the arguments that come later.
For AASB 13 fair value we begin with the value of the whole enterprise, using the market approach with listed peer and transaction multiples and the income approach with a discounted cash flow, as far as the company's stage and data allow. Enterprise value is then shared among the classes of securities by a waterfall, an option pricing method or a backsolve to the most recent round. Where the fund invested recently, the model is calibrated so it reproduces that price at that date, and later updates move only the inputs that have actually changed: performance against plan, peer multiples and milestones. Debt holdings are valued on yield against current rates for similar risk and cross-checked to enterprise value cover, and a convertible note may need to be split under AASB 9 into host debt and an embedded derivative that is remeasured each period.
AASB 136 work starts before any modelling, with the definition of cash-generating units and the allocation of goodwill, because a unit drawn too broadly lets a healthy business carry a struggling one, and auditors look for exactly that. Value in use then follows the standard: cash flows for the assets in their present state, without expansion capital or restructuring the entity has not committed to, a terminal growth rate backed by long-run evidence, and a pre-tax discount rate solved by iteration from a market-based post-tax weighted average cost of capital rather than simply grossed up. For a Gold Coast tourism or accommodation business the forecast is checked against several years of seasonal history and the events calendar, not one strong year; for a construction group, against the contracted order book and the tenders the board has approved. Where value in use comes close to the carrying amount, we also estimate fair value less costs of disposal on market participant assumptions, because recoverable amount is the higher of the two and testing only one can produce a write-down that should never have been booked.
For AASB 3, each acquired intangible is identified and valued by a method that suits it: multi-period excess earnings for customer relationships, relief from royalty for brands and technology, a with-and-without comparison for restraints, and replacement cost for the assembled workforce as a contributory asset. The returns implied for each asset are reconciled to the return on the deal as a whole, which is the check the auditor will perform. That work then becomes the base for the first impairment test and for tax cost setting, and the headroom and sensitivity analysis is laid out in the form the notes need, so it drops into the disclosures instead of being rebuilt after year end.
Each of these can turn a routine audit into a modified opinion, a restatement or correspondence with ASIC.
These valuations are written for an auditor, and sometimes for a regulator checking the auditor, so almost all of them are certified. The exception is planning work, when a Gold Coast board wants to know whether a write-down is coming, or how an acquisition would reshape the balance sheet, before it commits.
The report runs in the order an auditor works through an estimate: the accounting question, the unit of account, the measurement date, the information relied on, the method chosen and why, each input with its source and date, the calculation, the sensitivities and the disclosure schedule. Judgements are explained in plain words at the point they are made, so a reviewer at your audit firm can follow them without rebuilding the model.
A certified valuer signs every report, meets the auditor to answer questions, walks the audit committee through the sensitivities and defends the conclusion if it is challenged, including as an expert witness in the Supreme Court of Queensland if a reported value later becomes part of a commercial dispute. We plan the work around your close and bring your finance team and auditor in from the start, because a valuation that arrives after the accounts are signed is a debate, not evidence.
If the auditor rejects the assumption that matters most, how far does the value move, and does anyone already know? A valuation that cannot answer that on the spot has not been stress-tested.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.