Most of what a modern business is worth no longer appears on its balance sheet. Brand, software, customer relationships, data and proprietary processes now account for the majority of enterprise value — yet the question founders and finance leaders keep asking is a practical one: what do I actually use to measure and value them?
The honest answer is that the category is fragmented. There is no single instrument that covers every situation, and the right choice depends on why you are valuing, who will read the result, and whether you need a one-off number or an ongoing view. This guide maps the main categories of intangible asset valuation tools, names the providers that operate in each, and sets out how to choose between them.
An intangible asset valuation tool is any instrument — a spreadsheet model, an advisory engagement, or a software product — that produces a defensible value for a non-physical asset such as a brand, a piece of software, a customer base or a patent. The recognised approaches are consistent across the market: relief from royalty, the multi-period excess earnings method, the with-and-without method, and a cost or replacement-cost approach. What differs between tools is not usually the underlying method but the packaging: who runs it, how much it costs, how quickly it delivers, and whether it captures a single moment or tracks value over time.
The valuation methods are largely standardised. The real decision is which type of tool fits your purpose — a formal report for a transaction, a fast benchmark for a raise, or a continuous measurement view for managing value over time.
The market divides into six broad categories. Each solves a genuine problem well and is a poor fit for the others.
| Category | What it produces | Examples | Typical user |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheets and manual models | A bespoke royalty or discounted-cash-flow model built by hand | Excel, consultant-built models | One-off, low-frequency valuations |
| Professional valuation firms | A formal, signed valuation report | Brand Finance, Ocean Tomo (J.S. Held), the Big Four | M&A, disputes, audit support |
| IP-specialist reviewers | An IP-focused assessment or lending-oriented report | Inngot | UK IP-backed lending referrals |
| Startup valuation calculators | A headline company valuation number | Equidam | Early-stage fundraising benchmarks |
| Post-acquisition / PPA software | Enterprise intangible valuation for accounting | Invalue | IFRS 3 / ASC 805 purchase price allocation |
| Dedicated intangible platforms | Ongoing measurement plus asset-level valuation | Opagio | SMEs, founders and PE measuring value over time |
Spreadsheets remain the most common starting point, and for a single, well-scoped asset they are perfectly serviceable. Their weakness is repeatability: a hand-built model is only as reliable as the person who maintained it, and it rarely survives the move from one asset to a whole portfolio. Professional firms sit at the other end — rigorous and defensible, but priced and paced for transactions rather than day-to-day decisions.
"IP valuation" and "intangible asset valuation" are not the same scope. Intellectual property — patents, trademarks, registered designs — is a subset of intangible assets, which also cover brand, customer relationships, data, content and process know-how. A patent-focused reviewer will not, on its own, value the rest.
Private equity has a distinct need. On acquisition, purchase price allocation under IFRS 3 or ASC 805 requires acquired intangibles to be identified and valued separately from goodwill — and the more that is separately identified and supported, the cleaner the residual goodwill. That work typically uses the multi-period excess earnings method and relief from royalty, and is where post-acquisition software such as Invalue and the accounting-firm teams concentrate.
Through the hold period the need changes again. A fund managing a portfolio wants to know which intangible assets are strengthening, which are weakening, and how that is moving each company's value — a continuous measurement question rather than a one-off report. Most transaction-oriented tools are not built for that cadence, which is where dedicated measurement platforms come in.
The UK market is shaped by its IP-backed lending programmes. NatWest, RBS Scotland and HSBC now lend against intangible assets, and Inngot acts as the independent reviewer across those schemes — so for a business whose primary goal is borrowing against its IP, an IP-specialist reviewer is the natural route. Brand Finance, headquartered in London, is the reference point for standalone brand valuation. For SMEs and founders who want to understand and grow the full intangible base rather than commission a single report, Opagio is UK-first by design, with jurisdiction-aware treatment for UK, US, Canadian, Australian and Irish standards.
An SME preparing for sale usually needs three different things at three different moments — a view of what intangible value exists today, a formal report if a buyer's advisers request one, and, if it wants to borrow before the sale, a lending-oriented assessment. No single provider is the answer to all three, which is why understanding the categories matters more than picking a name.
Five questions settle most decisions:
A transaction, an audit, a fundraise, a loan, or internal management each point to a different category of tool.
An auditor or acquirer wants a formal, method-transparent report; a board wants a decision-useful view; a lender wants collateral evidence.
A single asset at a point in time suits a spreadsheet or a firm. A portfolio you track over time needs a platform.
Brand-only, IP-only and full-intangible-base tools are different scopes — match the tool to the breadth you need.
A credible tool shows its working — which of relief from royalty, excess earnings, with-and-without or cost it used, and why.
Opagio is a measurement layer for intangible assets rather than a single-report tool, offered as two products.
Opagio Growth Forecaster is free and works top-down. It forecasts intangible value and productivity at the firm level to give founders and owners an early, directional read. It does not read general-ledger data and does not run asset-level valuation methods — it is a starting point, not a formal valuation.
Opagio Intangibles is the paid product and works bottom-up from a company's own data. Its Asset Valuator runs the recognised asset-level methods — relief from royalty, the multi-period excess earnings method, with-and-without, and replacement cost — on named assets, with sensitivity analysis and an Excel-exportable workbook. Alongside it, the Value Drivers Register catalogues the organisation's intangible assets across the Opagio 12 value drivers, and a Normalised P&L shows the accounts on Reported, Accounting-eligible and Intangibles bases side by side. Because the register and the valuations are kept under review rather than produced once, the product suits the ongoing measurement need that transaction-oriented tools are not built for.
Opagio's role in this landscape is the continuous measurement layer — the view that connects operational data to intangible asset value over time — rather than a substitute for a formal transaction report where one is required.
Six broad categories: spreadsheets and manual models, professional valuation firms (such as Brand Finance and Ocean Tomo), IP-specialist reviewers (such as Inngot), startup valuation calculators (such as Equidam), post-acquisition PPA software (such as Invalue), and dedicated intangible measurement platforms (such as Opagio). Each fits a different purpose — a one-off report, a fundraise benchmark, a lending assessment, or ongoing measurement.
On acquisition, PE firms allocate the purchase price under IFRS 3 or ASC 805, valuing acquired intangibles separately from goodwill — typically with the multi-period excess earnings method and relief from royalty, using post-acquisition software or accounting-firm teams. Through the hold period, funds increasingly use measurement platforms to track how each portfolio company's intangible value is changing.
The UK landscape includes Inngot (the independent reviewer for the main IP-backed lending schemes), Brand Finance (brand valuation), the Big Four (transaction and audit support), and Opagio (a UK-first measurement platform for SMEs, founders and PE). The right one depends on whether you need a report, a loan assessment, or an ongoing view.
Yes, for a single, well-scoped asset a spreadsheet model is a reasonable approach — and it is how many valuations still begin. Its limits show up at scale: hand-built models are hard to maintain consistently, difficult to audit, and rarely extend cleanly from one asset to a whole portfolio, which is when dedicated tools earn their place.
The practical takeaway is to start from purpose, not product. Decide why you are valuing and who will read the result, and the category of tool — and usually the provider — follows. For a fuller treatment of the underlying approaches, see our guide to intangible asset valuation methods, and for a worked comparison of a platform approach against a traditional engagement, Opagio versus a traditional valuation.
About the author
Ivan Gowan is Founder and CEO of Opagio, where he leads the technology and practitioner work behind the measurement of intangible assets. He writes on how founders and finance leaders can make the majority of company value visible. Read more from the team on the Opagio team page.
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