How much are your clients’ businesses worth? Or your prospects’ businesses? Or even your own? Approximately 200 financial advisors from across a dozen firms are finding answers to these questions with the help of BizEquity, a provider of business valuations.

Wayne, Pa.-based BizEquity’s cloud-based valuation engine and system—the first and only patented online business valuation service, according to CEO Michael Carter—gathers information from more than 25 leading data providers and produces complete valuation results in just minutes. “It’s not just democratization of business valuation knowledge,” he says. “It’s the power of knowing how you compare to your peers.”

The 20 key performance indicators tracked by BizEquity include cash flow to revenue, debt to income, income to revenue, return on equity and, for manufacturing businesses, inventory turnover. BizEquity is also introducing a new search feature that shows the valuation and location of every local business that meets parameters selected by advisors or their clients.

So far, roughly 90% of advisors’ use of BizEquity has been for valuing businesses owned by their clients and prospects. The other 10% has been for valuing their own advisory practices. In addition to its U.S. operations, the company has opened offices in Singapore and the U.K. to work with advisors in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.

A professional subscription ($199.99 per month) provides 10 valuations annually. The advisor office package ($499.99 per month) provides 50 valuations annually, the ability to prospect and search 250 companies a year, and private labeling that puts the advisor’s brand on the online service and valuation report.

According to Carter, technology and growth companies typically overvalue themselves, while retailers, professional services firms, manufacturers and doctors’ offices tend to undervalue themselves. Giving clients the ability to value themselves is meaningful and provides a way for advisors to engage clients and differentiate themselves, he says. “If you can’t tell them what their business is worth,” he says, “what’s the point of an estate plan?”

Chris Roehm, a financial planner and a partner with Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Freedom Business Advisors, a fee-based firm that functions like a multifamily office to help business owners with financial planning and business-continuity planning, says BizEquity is a good prospecting tool. After his firm started licensing the service last year, “I went back to 10 people who had told me no before,” he says, “and six of them hired me.”

Freedom has also used BizEquity to perform valuations for the majority of its existing clients. Most have been happy with the valuations, which have usually exceeded their expectations, says Roehm. One client accelerated the transfer of his business to a family member. “He realized he did not need the income from the business or even to sell the business to fund his retirement,” he says. “The outcome was not a direct result of having the valuation, but it did play a part.”

Philadelphia-based RIA firm Cordasco Financial Network, which recently entered acquisition mode, uses BizEquity as a starting point to get preliminary valuations that it can use in conversations with RIA practices it might want to buy.

If things look favorable, Cordasco will then pay an outside firm to do a more comprehensive valuation analysis on the potential target, says founder and principal Steve Cordasco.

He used BizEquity to value his firm. “It surprised us how close it got to what we believe the value of our business is,” he says.