Selling a business is one of the biggest financial events your clients may face, and it’s essential to get the planning right. In this video, we show Financial and Wealth Advisers how to model the sale of a business in Voyant. You’ll learn how to: Enter and present a one-time (single-year) sale, Model a phased transfer of ownership over time, Demonstrate the impact of each approach in a client’s financial plan. This walkthrough will help you clearly present different business sale strategies so clients can make confident, informed decisions about their future.
Transcript
Modeling the Sale of a Business in Voyant
Welcome to today’s training. I’m going to walk you through how to model the sale of a business in Voyant, using the corporate module. There are two main approaches:
Selling the business in a single year.
Phasing the sale over multiple years.
I’ll start with the one-time sale, then demonstrate how to set up a phased transfer.
Scenario Setup
Our client owns a law practice as a sole proprietorship. We’ll create a What-If plan to explore how selling the business at retirement affects their financial plan. Then we’ll build a second What-If plan showing the impact of a phased sale over five years.
One-Time Sale at Retirement
Open the corporate module.
Go to Ownership Transfers and select Add Transfer.
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Use an existing event on the timeline (such as retirement) or create a new one by double-clicking on the timeline.
For example, name the event Goffman Law Sale.
Set the event as the start event, change the type from Gift to Sale, and click Done.
You’ll notice a spike on the timeline in the year following the sale. This represents taxes owed in arrears.
Let’s look deeper in Year View:
The year before the sale: the client owns 100% of the business.
The year of the sale: ownership drops to 0%. The company value is still visible, but the client no longer holds it.
Under Investments, you’ll see proceeds from the sale deposited into the client’s cash account.
To optimize growth, we’ll sweep these funds into a brokerage account:
Open Sweep Options under the client’s cash account.
Select the brokerage account as the destination for surplus funds (such as business sale proceeds, inheritances, or property sales).
Save changes.
Now in Year View, you’ll see the funds withdrawn from cash and deposited into the brokerage account.
Finally, compare the two plans:
In the base plan, we see shortfalls in retirement.
In the “Sell at Retirement” plan, retirement is fully funded.
Looking at assets side by side, removing corporate assets highlights the difference in personal holdings.
Phased Sale Over Five Years
Now let’s model the phased sale.
Create another What-If plan: Sell Business Over 5 Years.
Go to the corporate section, open the business, and select Ownership Transfer.
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Add a transfer at retirement, set the type to Sale, and toggle Transfer Over Multiple Years.
Enter a 5-year transfer period for 100% of ownership.
Save changes.
In this version, instead of one large spike in the cash flow, you’ll see smaller spikes spread across five years, reflecting taxes due annually on the partial transfers.
Checking Year View:
The client’s ownership decreases gradually until it reaches 0%.
Contributions from the business sale flow into the cash account.
Tax bills are higher across those years, reflecting phased capital gains.
Again, sweep proceeds into the brokerage account to maximize growth.
Comparing the Two Approaches
Using Compare Plans in Chart View:
Cash Flow: One-time sale creates a single spike, phased sale spreads impact over five years.
Assets: At the end of the plan, personal assets are higher under the phased sale.
Taxes: The phased sale results in slightly higher cumulative taxes overall.
This side-by-side comparison helps clients weigh the trade-offs between simplicity (selling all at once) and long-term outcomes (phased sale).
Wrap-Up
That’s how to model a business sale in Voyant, both as a single-year event and as a phased transfer. If you have any questions, you can reach us at support@planwithvoyant.com or use the in-app Request Support option by clicking your client’s name in the top right.
Thanks for joining today’s training!