Accountant vs business valuator

An accountant and a business valuator both work with a company’s numbers, and the same person sometimes holds credentials adjacent to both, but they typically answer different questions. An accountant’s core work is producing, reviewing and interpreting financial statements and tax filings — the accurate historical record. A business valuator’s core work is answering a narrower, specific question: what is this business worth, supported by a defensible method, as of a given date and for a stated purpose.

What an accountant does

A Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) — the single designation that unified Canada’s former CA, CGA and CMA streams — prepares or reviews financial statements, manages bookkeeping and tax compliance, and advises on the tax structure of a sale, including whether an asset or share transaction better suits the seller’s situation. Most accountants can also give an informal, ballpark sense of what a business might be worth, based on the earnings shown in the financials and general market patterns they have seen. That informal read is genuinely useful for early planning, but it is not built to the same standard, or with the same independence and methodology, as a formal valuation report.

• Produces the audited, reviewed or compiled financial statements a valuation ultimately relies on
• Advises on the tax structure and consequences of how a sale is set up
• Can offer an informal estimate of value, useful for early planning
• Generally not credentialed to produce a formal valuation report intended to withstand outside scrutiny

What a business valuator does

A Chartered Business Valuator (CBV) holds a designation specific to determining value, earned through dedicated training and examination on top of an existing accounting or finance background, and works to recognized professional valuation standards. A CBV applies structured methods — an income approach based on projected or normalized earnings, a market approach based on comparable transactions, an asset approach, or some blend of the three — and documents the reasoning behind the conclusion in a formal report. That report is what typically stands up in a shareholder dispute, a matrimonial matter, an estate valuation, a CRA challenge, or any situation where the number genuinely needs to be defended, not just referenced.

• Holds a designation specific to valuation, distinct from general accounting credentials
• Applies documented, recognized methods rather than a general rule of thumb
• Produces a report built to withstand outside scrutiny, not an informal estimate
• Engaged specifically because the valuation conclusion needs to be defensible

How to choose

For ordinary tax and financial-statement work, and for a first, informal sense of value while deciding whether to explore a sale at all, an accountant is the right and usually the only professional needed. The moment a valuation number has to hold up to someone else — a lender, a co-shareholder, a former spouse, the CRA, or a buyer who genuinely disputes the price — the engagement calls for a credentialed valuator working to recognized standards, not an accountant’s informal estimate stretched further than it was ever meant to go. Many sale processes use both: the accountant handling the ongoing financial and tax work, and a valuator brought in specifically when a defensible number is required.