If you want to buy an accounting practice, you’ve picked one of the fastest ways to grow 🚀
When you buy an accounting practice, you pick up an existing client base, recurring fees, and often a ready-made team — all at once. Building that from scratch, by contrast, takes years.
But here’s the catch nobody mentions: for most buyers, evaluating a firm isn’t the hard part. Finding one you’re actually allowed to see is. First, though, let’s cover what to look for 👇
🧐 What to look for in a practice
✅ Recurring fee quality — assess how much income is contracted and predictable versus once-off project work.
📊 Client concentration — determine whether income is spread across many clients or reliant on a few large ones.
👤 Owner dependence — evaluate whether clients are loyal to the firm and staff, or primarily to the departing owner.
👥 Staff stability — consider whether the team is likely to remain through and beyond the transition.
⚙️ Service and client fit — ensure the work, software, and client profile align with how your firm operates.
💰 Understanding the price
Accounting practices in South Africa generally sell for between 0.5 and 1.4 times annual recurring fees 📊
Your job as a buyer is to understand why a given practice sits where it does. For example, a price near the top should be backed by low risk — diversified clients, low owner dependence, staff staying on. A lower multiple, meanwhile, usually reflects risk you’ll need to manage after the sale.
🔬 Doing your due diligence
Before you commit, work through the fundamentals:
💰 Financials — review several years of fee income, profitability, debtors, and work in progress.
📈 Client analysis — examine fees by client, relationship longevity, and concentration risk.
👥 Staff — assess roles, contracts, salaries, and likely retention after the transaction.
⚙️ Systems & compliance — evaluate software, processes, and any outstanding regulatory matters.
🛡️ Retention terms — understand how the deal protects you if clients leave after the sale.
🏦 Funding the purchase
Few practice deals are paid entirely upfront. Instead, most combine a deposit with deferred payments or seller finance, often tied to client retention over the first year or two. Consequently, everyone is aligned: the seller is motivated to hand over well, and you’re protected if clients don’t stay 🤝
❓ So what’s the real obstacle?
Access. 🔑
Traditionally, the only way to see practices for sale was to get onto a broker’s private database and wait to be shown whatever they chose to introduce you to. As a result, plenty of serious, well-funded buyers never see the firms that would suit them best — simply because they were never put in front of them 😕
An open marketplace flips that. Specifically, when practices are listed transparently and buyers can register and browse for themselves, you see the full range of what’s available, compare opportunities on your own terms, and approach sellers directly — instead of waiting for an introduction that may never come 🔓
That’s exactly what AFS is built to do: it lets registered buyers buy an accounting practice through direct, open access to every accounting practice for sale across South Africa.
🔎 Ready to find your next practice?
Register as a buyer to get direct access to firms listed for sale across South Africa. See what’s genuinely available and approach sellers yourself, with no database to get into and no gatekeeping in between.