As the life cycle of a business progresses, valuation, succession, and disposition become intertwined as owners seek to transfer ownership interests and/or create liquidity.

Traditional financial statement measures rarely reflect the true value of a successful business. While publicly traded companies find their value in a free market of buyers and sellers, owners of privately-held companies do not enjoy such readily available data.

From a business owner’s perspective an intangible asset is anything that adds value to your firm, but generally does not show up in historical-based accounting systems--unless recorded via an acquisition. For example customer relationships, trade names and contracts can be intangible assets.

Many business owners are not aware of the variety of intangible assets which should be considered for valuation. Below are some additional examples of intangible assets:

Partners are collectively entitled to each and every asset of the partnership, in which each of them has an undivided share. But without knowing an exact value, how can a partner structure the value of his business for estate planning? If a new partner joins the firm how will the current distribution of assets be affect partnership interest? What happens if one of the partners decides to leave the business? If the partners sell the business or merge with another firm how are partnership interests affected?