Turn the invisible value inside your business into identifiable, measurable and commercially useful assets
You have spent years building your business.
But how much of what you have built can actually be identified, evidenced, valued and transferred?
Your accounts tell us what your business earned. They don't necessarily tell us what you've built.
Discover the Hidden Value in Your Business
Find out what you've already created, what may have commercial value and what you could do with it.
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We help established business owners identify the intellectual property, know-how, systems, processes, software, data, brands, methodologies and relationships sitting behind their financial results.
Then we work out which actually matter, where the value sits and what you can practically do with them.
It starts with three things
Find It
We get underneath the accounts and examine how your business actually works.
What does the business know? What does it do differently? What has taken years to develop? What would be difficult for somebody else to replicate?
And critically, what currently disappears if you or another key person walks out of the door?
Understand It
We identify the assets that genuinely matter and examine how they contribute to revenue, margins, customer retention, competitive advantage, scalability and the wider value of the business.
Not everything is valuable. The job is separating what genuinely matters from everything else.
Do Something With It
Once we understand what exists, we can determine what should happen next.
That might mean documenting it. Protecting it. Separating it. Productising it. Licensing it. Building recurring revenue around it. Preparing it for a transaction.
Or simply making sure that something you spent ten years building doesn't disappear when somebody leaves.
Discover the Hidden Value in Your Business
Find out what you've already created, what may have commercial value and what you could do with it.
Discover the Hidden Value in Your BusinessYou may have spent years building something your balance sheet barely recognises
Maybe your company has developed a way of doing something that competitors simply aren't as good at. Perhaps you've built:
- proprietary processes
- software
- databases
- specialist methodologies
- training systems
- content
- brands
- commercial relationships
- customer intelligence
- pricing models
- operating systems
- technical know-how
And because you've been using those things every day, you've never really stopped to think of them as assets. They're simply: “How we do things.”
Because your accounts may tell us that the business generated £500,000, £2 million or £10 million of turnover. They don't necessarily explain why.
What has this business spent years creating that somebody else would find difficult, expensive or time-consuming to replicate?
That's the question we're interested in.
Most business owners don't have an IP problem. They have a recognition problem.
Mention intellectual property and most people immediately think patents, trade marks, copyright and logos. All important — but that can miss a substantial part of what makes an established business commercially valuable.
The valuable bit might be a methodology that took ten years to refine. A dataset nobody else possesses. Software developed internally. A highly effective sales process. Specialist technical knowledge. A repeatable delivery system. A trusted brand. Training material. Customer intelligence.
The first job isn't necessarily protecting it. The first job is finding it. Because you cannot sensibly value, protect or commercialise something you haven't properly identified.
And there's another problem. A surprising amount of valuable business knowledge lives inside people's heads.
- The founder knows how something works.
- Sarah knows why that client buys.
- Dave built the spreadsheet.
- Nobody knows quite how the pricing model works except John.
- The operations director has the supplier relationships.
Everything works. Until one day it doesn't. Someone leaves. The founder retires. The business is sold. A buyer starts asking questions.
And suddenly everyone discovers that something incredibly important to the company was never really owned by the company in a practically usable form. That is not simply an operational problem. It can be a value problem.
We've seen this inside our own business
Point Accounting has spent years accumulating technical knowledge, commercial judgement, operating processes, methodologies and experience. Some of that existed in systems and documents. Some existed in processes. And some existed primarily in people's heads.
So we started systematically extracting it — converting tacit knowledge into documented processes, structured workflows, centralised practice memory and reusable knowledge.
Could another competent person pick this up tomorrow and understand what to do without having the person who created it sitting beside them?
Knowledge that depends entirely upon an individual is difficult to scale and difficult to transfer. Knowledge that has been identified, structured and embedded within the organisation is a very different proposition.
That experience helped shape the methodology we now apply when looking for hidden intellectual capital inside other founder-led businesses.
This isn't theoretical
We've been solving versions of this problem for years.
Professional Services: turning knowledge into an operating asset
We worked with an established professional practice where important operational knowledge had accumulated across individual members of staff, documents and inconsistent working practices.
The immediate problem looked operational. Underneath it sat a more important commercial issue: the business had spent years developing valuable know-how without systematically capturing it.
The work involved mapping processes, defining ownership, creating clear handovers, establishing quality gates and building a central source of truth — turning knowledge that belonged to individuals into knowledge the business could retain and reuse.
Founder Dependency: making experience transferable
In another project, valuable judgement and decision-making remained concentrated amongst senior individuals.
Rather than simply documenting procedures, the work examined how experienced people actually thought. How did they diagnose problems? What did they notice? What questions did they ask? What separated a good decision from a bad one?
This became a structured knowledge architecture capable of capturing not simply information, but elements of professional judgement. The less valuable knowledge disappears when somebody leaves, the stronger the underlying business becomes.
Transactions: explaining what the buyer is actually buying
We have also worked with business owners considering acquisitions, disposals and future transactions where the historic accounts alone did not explain the quality of the underlying business.
The analysis moved beyond turnover and historic profit to recurring income, customer relationships, systems, management dependency, commercial know-how, operational resilience and transferability.
The question wasn't simply what did this company earn. It was: what exactly is somebody buying?
What we actually do
Our work falls into six areas.
Discover
Identify the intangible assets already sitting inside the company: brands, software, data, methodologies, systems, processes, content, know-how, relationships, licences, commercial models and other intellectual capital.
We then separate the potentially important assets from everything else.
Evidence
Work out:
- what the asset actually is
- where it came from
- who created it
- who controls it
- where the evidence sits
- how it is currently used
- what commercial function it performs
Value
Connect the assets back to commercial performance. Does the asset contribute to:
- revenue and pricing power
- margins and efficiency
- customer retention
- recurring income
- scalability and resilience
- competitive advantage and transferability
Protect
Identify where commercially important assets may be exposed:
- unclear ownership
- founder dependency
- undocumented know-how
- weak contractor arrangements
- confidentiality and digital asset control
- poor evidence, access or governance
Commercialise
Some businesses are sitting on assets they use once when they could potentially use them repeatedly. That can lead us to explore:
- licensing and white labelling
- subscriptions and new pricing models
- training and certification
- franchising and partnerships
- software licensing and data products
- productised know-how
Build
Finally, we help make the process repeatable — asset registers, knowledge capture, operating procedures, ownership records, version control, governance, management dashboards and implementation plans.
Because there is little point spending months identifying valuable IP if the business immediately goes back to creating new intellectual property without recording it.
Why Point Accounting?
Because we start with the business, not the theory.
MyBusinessWorth is delivered by Point Accounting Ltd, an established UK accountancy and business advisory practice led by Tony McKenna. We spend our working lives inside owner-managed businesses. That means we naturally start with:
- where the money comes from
- what drives margins
- what creates recurring income
- what customers actually value
- what makes the company difficult to replicate
- what makes it dependent upon its founder
- what makes it transferable
- what another owner may actually be acquiring
That financial and commercial perspective matters, because intellectual property only becomes particularly interesting when we can answer: what does this actually do for the business?
What might come out of the process?
Depending upon the business and what we discover, outputs may include:
Intangible Asset Discovery
A structured examination of the assets already inside the business.
Priority Asset Register
A central view of potentially important intangible assets, their ownership, use, evidence and commercial relevance.
Founder Dependency Review
Identification of knowledge, relationships and decision-making that remain excessively dependent upon particular individuals.
Commercial Value Assessment
Analysis of how priority assets contribute to financial and commercial performance.
Indicative Asset Value Analysis
High-level valuation ranges and identification of what further evidence would be required for a formal specialist valuation.
Ownership and Evidence Review
Identification of areas requiring stronger documentation or specialist legal attention.
Commercialisation Review
Identification of realistic opportunities to generate additional commercial value from existing assets.
90-Day Action Plan
A prioritised implementation programme focused on the actions most likely to matter.
Exit and Transaction Readiness
Assessment of whether important intangible value is sufficiently visible, evidenced and transferable for future due diligence.
Your accounts tell you what happened. We want to understand what caused it.
If your company consistently generates strong margins, there is a reason. If customers repeatedly choose you, there is a reason. If your team can deliver something competitors struggle to replicate, there is a reason. If you have developed systems that make the company more efficient, there is a reason.
If you have accumulated data, knowledge or relationships over ten years, there may be value in them.
The interesting question is: have you actually identified what you've built? And then: are you getting everything you reasonably can from it?
Your Questions Answered
What exactly do you mean by intellectual property and intangible assets?
Much more than patents and trade marks.
Depending upon the business, valuable intangible assets can include brands, software, databases, operating processes, methodologies, customer relationships, specialist know-how, training material, content, trade secrets and knowledge embedded within the team.
Our first job is to identify what exists and establish which assets actually matter commercially.
How do I know if my business has valuable IP?
A useful starting question is: does your business do anything valuable that would be difficult, expensive or time-consuming for a competitor to reproduce?
If the answer is yes, it is worth understanding why. That doesn't automatically mean you possess highly valuable IP. It means there is something worth investigating.
Can you tell me what my IP is worth?
We can assess its commercial importance and, where appropriate, develop indicative value ranges based upon the information and evidence available.
Different assets require different valuation approaches. Where a formal valuation is required for a transaction, taxation, litigation or another specific purpose, we will identify that requirement and recommend the appropriate specialist input.
Why does this matter if my business is already profitable?
Because profit and transferable value are not the same thing.
A company can be extremely profitable while remaining heavily dependent upon its founder, particular employees, undocumented knowledge or relationships.
Understanding the intangible assets behind the profit helps identify whether those advantages belong sustainably to the company and what could potentially strengthen them.
Can you help if I'm considering selling?
Yes. One of the most useful questions during exit planning is: what exactly will the buyer own the day after completion?
Identifying and documenting the assets behind earnings can make that question much easier to answer and highlight weaknesses before due diligence exposes them.
It does not guarantee a higher selling price, but it can provide a much clearer picture of what the business has actually created.
What if my IP isn't registered?
That is extremely common. Not every valuable intangible asset can or should be formally registered.
The appropriate approach depends upon the asset and may involve evidence, confidentiality, contracts, operating controls, access restrictions or formal registration. Where specialist legal advice is required, we will identify it.
Can you capture knowledge that currently sits with me or my team?
Yes. This is one of the areas we find particularly interesting.
We can help identify important knowledge, processes and decision-making that currently depend upon particular people and develop a structured approach for capturing them.
Could some of our knowledge or systems be commercialised separately?
Potentially. A methodology, system, software product, dataset, training programme or other asset may sometimes have commercial applications beyond its existing use.
We examine whether there is a credible market, what somebody might actually pay for and whether pursuing the opportunity makes commercial sense.
How is this different from ordinary accountancy or legal IP work?
Traditional accounts primarily tell you what has already happened financially. They don't necessarily provide a complete picture of the systems, knowledge, methodologies, data and other intangible assets responsible for producing those results.
Legal IP specialists provide the expertise required to establish and protect legal rights. Our work sits between those disciplines.
We start commercially: what has this business created? What actually matters? How does it contribute to performance? Where is value being lost? What might be done with it?
Once those questions are answered, the appropriate accounting, valuation, tax and legal expertise can be brought into the areas where it is required.
What do I receive at the end?
That depends upon what we find and what you're trying to achieve. The objective is not to give you a hundred-page report full of interesting observations.
It is to leave you with a clearer understanding of what you own, what matters, what may be valuable, what is exposed, what could be commercialised and what you should do next.
Discover the Hidden Value in Your Business
You've already spent the years building it. Let's find out what you've actually built.
Discover the Hidden Value in Your Business