# Instilus

> Free calculators and plain-English guides for people valuing, buying, selling or running a small business. Every tool runs in the visitor’s own browser and shows its working; nothing they type is sent anywhere. Published by A Star Supply, a UK sole trader.

All arithmetic and worked examples are shown in full on the page, so a figure can be quoted with its derivation rather than on trust. None of it is financial, tax or legal advice.

## Free tools (no sign-up, no account, nothing stored)

- [Business valuation calculator](https://www.instilus.com/business-valuation-calculator): What is my business worth? Normalised profit and an indicative value range from your own figures, with every step of the arithmetic shown.
- [EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA calculator](https://www.instilus.com/ebitda-calculator): What is my EBITDA, and my adjusted EBITDA after owner add-backs and one-off costs?
- [Acquisition affordability calculator](https://www.instilus.com/acquisition-calculator): Can a business I am buying pay for its own purchase out of its first year of profit, and what happens at 10% below plan?
- [Break-even calculator](https://www.instilus.com/break-even-calculator): How many sales a month do I need to cover costs, and how many to reach a target profit?
- [Profit margin and markup calculator](https://www.instilus.com/profit-margin-calculator): What is the difference between margin and markup, and what price does a target margin require?
- [Freelance rate calculator](https://www.instilus.com/freelance-rate-calculator): What hourly or day rate do I need to charge, once utilisation is taken into account?
- [Free agency financial health check](https://www.instilus.com/tools/agency-financial-health-check): Is my marketing or creative agency financially healthy? Enter six real numbers and get Agency Gross Income, utilisation rate, delivery margin and break-even AGI, against stated industry benchmarks.
- [Monthly surplus calculator](https://www.instilus.com/tools/money-reset-calculator): What is my real monthly surplus or deficit? Enter income and actual spending to get the surplus, the savings rate, and how many months it takes to build an emergency fund.
- [Roofing lead profitability calculator](https://www.instilus.com/tools/roofing-lead-profitability-calculator): Is a lead source actually profitable for a roofing or remodeling contractor? Enter job value, close rate, margin and cost per lead to get the exact number that source has to beat.
- [Free Shopify store audit](https://www.instilus.com/roast): Why is my Shopify store not converting? Runs against the store’s own public pages and ranks what it finds by the money each problem costs, rather than by a score out of a hundred. No account and no email needed.
- [Shopify store benchmarks (203 real stores)](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-store-benchmarks): How does my Shopify store compare? First-party measurements across 203 real storefronts: median homepage weight and load time, what share of homepage images carry no alt text, how many products ship with no description or a single photo, and how often a refund or shipping policy cannot be found. Every figure states the sample it came from and no store is named.

## Measured answers about Shopify stores (first-party data)

- [How big is the average Shopify homepage?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/average-shopify-homepage-size): How big is the average Shopify homepage? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How fast does a typical Shopify store respond?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-store-load-time): How fast does a typical Shopify store respond? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How many Shopify stores are missing image alt text?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-image-alt-text): How many Shopify stores are missing image alt text? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How many photos does a Shopify product usually have?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-product-images): How many photos does a Shopify product usually have? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How long is a typical Shopify product description?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-product-description-length): How long is a typical Shopify product description? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [Do most Shopify stores publish a refund policy?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-refund-policy-page): Do most Shopify stores publish a refund policy? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How many Shopify stores are missing a meta description?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-meta-description): How many Shopify stores are missing a meta description? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How many Shopify stores publish a shipping policy?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-shipping-policy-page): How many Shopify stores publish a shipping policy? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How many third-party scripts does a Shopify store load?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-third-party-scripts): How many third-party scripts does a Shopify store load? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.
- [How many Shopify stores have no H1 heading?](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-benchmarks/shopify-h1-heading): How many Shopify stores have no H1 heading? Answered from Instilus's own readings of 203 real Shopify storefronts, with the sample stated beside every figure. No store is named.

## Start here

- [Instilus - free business valuation and Shopify store tools](https://www.instilus.com/): What does this site do? Score a Shopify store on speed, SEO, trust and product pages, or work out what a business is worth before naming a price to a broker. Both free, no email and no account.
- [Business spreadsheet guides](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides): Worked guides to the sums small businesses run in a spreadsheet: Etsy fees, cash flow forecasting, utilisation, valuation, lead tracking and content.
- [Instilus apps for Shopify stores](https://www.instilus.com/apps): Apps that make risky store changes safe: reversible sales, staging with reviewed publishing, and undo for everything they change.
- [Shopify store benchmarks — the dataset, CC BY 4.0](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-store-benchmarks.json): Machine-readable first-party measurements of 199 real Shopify storefronts: median homepage weight and load time, share of images with no alt text, products with no description or one photo, and how often a refund or shipping policy cannot be found. Every figure carries the number of stores it came from. Free to reuse with attribution; no store is named.
- [Affiliate programme — 40% commission, recurring monthly](https://www.instilus.com/partners): Is there an affiliate or partner programme, and does it pay recurring commission? Yes to both. On the $49-a-month Shopify store re-audit it pays 40% of the first month and 30% of every month the customer stays, for as long as they stay. On the one-off digital products, priced $299 to $999, it pays 40% of each sale, rising to 50% after five referrals. Self-serve: a real Stripe discount code is issued immediately, there is no application and no approval queue. Promotion rules are published on the page and are binding.
- [EOQ and reorder point calculator — how much to order, and when](https://www.instilus.com/economic-order-quantity-calculator): What is the economic order quantity, and at what stock level should the order be placed? EOQ is the square root of two times annual demand times the order cost, divided by the annual holding cost per unit — the order size at which ordering and holding costs are equal and their total is lowest. Reorder point is average daily usage times lead time plus safety stock, which answers when rather than how much. Both are returned from the same inputs, along with orders per year, the days between them and the cash tied up in an average order. Free, runs in the browser.
- [Landed cost calculator — per unit, with duty on the CIF value](https://www.instilus.com/landed-cost-calculator): What does an imported unit actually cost once it is on the shelf? Enter the units, unit cost, freight, insurance, duty rate, clearance and other costs and it returns the per-unit landed cost, each component as a share of the total, the uplift on the invoice price, and the gross margin at a sell price. Two things it gets right that most do not: duty is applied to the goods plus freight and insurance rather than to the invoice value alone, and import VAT is excluded because a VAT-registered business reclaims it. Free, runs in the browser, nothing transmitted.
- [Management buyout calculator — can the deal be funded?](https://www.instilus.com/management-buyout-calculator): Can a management buyout actually be funded, and can the business carry the debt? Enter the purchase price, annual EBITDA, the cash the management team can put in, the senior debt and its rate and term, and the vendor loan note. It returns total sources against the price, any funding gap, the annual senior repayment and vendor note repayment, total debt service, EBITDA cover, and cover again with earnings twenty per cent below plan — because a structure that only works at plan is a structure that fails. Free, runs entirely in the browser, nothing transmitted.
- [Which apps and themes Shopify stores actually run — counted, CC BY 4.0](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-app-usage): Which apps do Shopify stores really use? Counted from real storefronts rather than ranked by App Store listing position or review count, with one reading per store and the sample stated beside every figure. An app is counted only where its own host loads on the storefront, so admin-only apps and scripts proxied through a store’s own domain are invisible and every share is a floor rather than a ceiling. The sample is stores somebody chose to look up, not a random draw from Shopify. Machine-readable at /shopify-app-usage.json and free to reuse with attribution.
- [Is this website built on Shopify? — free check](https://www.instilus.com/is-this-site-shopify): How do you tell whether a website runs on Shopify? Paste the address and the page is fetched exactly as a browser would fetch it, then checked for Shopify’s own fingerprints: the Shopify.theme object, assets served from cdn.shopify.com, and platform feature markers. A “no” means none of those were found, not that the site has been proven to be something else. Free, no sign-up, nothing installed.
- [Which apps is a Shopify store running? — free check](https://www.instilus.com/what-apps-does-this-shopify-store-use): Which apps does a Shopify store use? The apps whose own hosts load on the storefront are named, each printed with the host that identified it so the reading can be checked. Large stores often show none because they proxy scripts through their own domain or load them late, and a great many Shopify apps are admin-only with nothing on the storefront at all — so an app that is not listed has not been ruled out.
- [Shopify theme and app detector — free, no sign-up](https://www.instilus.com/shopify-theme-detector): What theme does a Shopify store use, and which apps run on it? Paste any store address and get the theme name, the developer name it was built under, its version, and whether it came from the Shopify Theme Store or is custom; the apps whose own hosts load on the storefront, each shown with the host that identified it; and the size and price range of the public product catalogue. Read from the store’s own public pages with no login and nothing installed. An app that is not listed has not been ruled out — only what was matched is named.
- [Shopify tools for agencies and freelancers](https://www.instilus.com/for-agencies): What is there for a Shopify agency or freelancer who looks after many client stores? A free score for any store from its public pages alone, with no login and nothing installed, so it can be run on a prospect. A published dataset of real storefront measurements to set a client report against. Monthly monitoring that re-reads every product and emails what changed, which pays the agency 40% of the first month and 30% of every month the client stays. One subscription can cover several stores, each with its own email. Two Shopify apps with free plans for staging and for reversible price changes.
- [Partner content pack — Shopify store score and Store Watch](https://www.instilus.com/partners/shopify): What can an affiliate actually post? Ready-made short-form scripts, long-form concepts, newsletter placements and LinkedIn posts for the free Shopify store score and the monthly re-audit, plus the claims that may not be made — no promising the score raises anyone sales, and every post must be labelled as an ad.

## Guides

- [Sage 50 US .NET API: Application ID and .NET Core](https://www.instilus.com/sage-50-api): How do I get access to the Sage 50 US SDK, how does the Application ID work, what does it cost, and why will the API not run on .NET Core? Sourced from Sage’s own documentation and community answers.
- [How to value a small business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-value-a-business): Why two advisers give valuations hundreds of thousands apart: normalised earnings times a multiple, where neither half is a fact.
- [SDE vs EBITDA](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/sde-vs-ebitda): Which earnings figure values a small business, and why SDE and EBITDA treat the owner’s pay differently.
- [How to sell a business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-sell-a-business): The sale process end to end, including the working-capital adjustment sellers understand last and pay for first.
- [Management buyout](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/management-buyout): What a buyout has to repay in year one, worked in full on a £1.2m deal at a 4x multiple.
- [Due diligence when buying a business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/due-diligence-checklist-buying-a-business): What buyers actually check, grouped by what each finding does to the price rather than whether it ends the deal.
- [Selling to a competitor](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/selling-your-business-to-a-competitor): How to stage disclosure when the likely buyer is a rival who benefits even if the deal collapses.
- [Selling a business without a broker](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/selling-a-business-without-a-broker): Can I sell my business myself? What a broker actually does, which of those jobs you can do yourself, and the break-even sum on their fee.
- [Valuing a business on revenue](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/what-is-my-business-worth-based-on-revenue): What is my business worth based on revenue or turnover, why the multiple is doing all the work, and when revenue is the wrong base.
- [Earn-outs when selling a business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/earn-out-when-selling-a-business): What an earn-out is, how the target is defined, who the choice of revenue, gross profit or EBITDA favours, and the arithmetic that decides what actually gets paid.
- [Selling a business that has debt](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/selling-a-business-with-debt): Can I sell a business with debt? Enterprise value versus equity value: a multiple prices the business, and you receive that minus debt plus surplus cash.
- [Business valuation multiples](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/business-valuation-multiples-explained): What a valuation multiple is applied to, what moves it up or down, and why a published industry-average multiple cannot price an individual business.
- [Buying a business with no money down](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/buying-a-business-with-no-money): What no money down really means: the price is repaid out of the business future profits. The year-one affordability sum, worked twice.
- [Business exit strategy options](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/business-exit-strategy-options): The exits an owner really has - trade sale, financial buyer, management buyout, family succession, winding down, or keeping it - compared on cash at completion.
- [Selling a business quickly](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/selling-a-business-quickly): How to sell a business fast, and what speed costs: the exchange rate between time and price, and which delays can be removed in weeks.
- [Heads of terms in a business sale](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/heads-of-terms-business-sale): What a heads of terms decides in money terms: price structure, cash at completion, working capital and exclusivity. The document itself is for a solicitor.
- [Selling to a private equity buyer](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/selling-a-business-to-private-equity): How a financial buyer differs from a trade buyer, what equity rollover means for the seller outcome, and whether a business is large enough to interest one.
- [Asset sale versus share sale](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/asset-sale-vs-share-sale): What actually changes hands in each structure, what stays behind, why a buyer usually prefers assets and a seller shares, and where the money differs.
- [How long it takes to sell a business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-long-to-sell-a-business): No honest average exists. The seven stages, what drives the length of each, and how to estimate your own timeline from your own situation.
- [Selling a business to a family member](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/selling-a-business-to-a-family-member): Getting a defensible price when the buyer is family, how they fund it out of future profits, and fairness between children who are not buying.
- [Documents needed to sell a business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/documents-needed-to-sell-a-business): What a buyer asks for and what each document proves - because every gap becomes a discount, a warranty or money held back.
- [Do you need a business broker?](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/do-you-need-a-business-broker): What a broker costs, what they do, and the one variable that decides whether it is worth it.
- [Agency utilisation rate](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/agency-utilization-rate): How utilisation is calculated and why the denominator decides the answer.
- [Cash flow forecasting](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/cash-flow-forecast-template): How to build a cash flow forecast, and why profitable businesses still run out of cash.
- [What eBay takes from a sale](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-much-does-ebay-take): eBay fees fee by fee, worked on real orders. UK private sellers and UK business sellers are charged completely differently, which changes the answer more than anything else.
- [What Shopify costs per sale](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/shopify-fees-per-sale): Subscription, card rates and the extra charged for third-party gateways, plus the comparison against a marketplace once customer acquisition is counted.
- [How to price a product](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-price-a-product): Pricing from true cost per unit including the fees and per-order costs people leave out, the margin versus markup trap, and what a discount must sell to stand still.
- [Amazon FBA fees](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/amazon-fba-fees-explained): What Amazon takes from an FBA sale: referral fee by category, fulfilment driven by size and weight, storage that compounds on slow stock, and returns.
- [How to do a competitor analysis](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-do-a-competitor-analysis): The practical method: choosing three to five real competitors, the six things each one publishes, dating and grading every finding, and the arithmetic that turns a finding into a decision.
- [How to enter a new market](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-enter-a-new-market): What to check before committing budget: define the market so it can be wrong, cost the entry honestly, work out the monthly floor and the payback, and ask why the market is still empty.
- [The competition slide in a pitch deck](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/competition-slide-pitch-deck): What an investor is really asking about competitors, why the 2x2 with you in the top right fails, and the switching-cost payback sum that carries the slide.
- [Etsy fees on a sale](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-much-does-etsy-take): Exactly what Etsy deducts from a $100 sale, fee by fee.
- [Tracking leads in Excel](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-track-leads-in-excel): The nine columns a working lead tracker needs, and the formulas that come out of them.
- [Social media content calendar](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/social-media-content-calendar-template): The eight columns of a content calendar, built a month at a time.
- [How to Value a Service Business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-value-a-service-business): A service business has few assets, so value is earnings times a multiple — and the multiple turns on whether clients stay once you have gone.
- [How to Value a Shop or Retail Business](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-value-a-retail-business): A shop is valued on earnings, but the lease, the stock figure and which twelve months you use can move the answer more than the multiple does.
- [Etsy vs Shopify Fees: Which Is Cheaper, and When](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/etsy-vs-shopify-fees): Both platforms' own published UK rates on the same order, the order count where Shopify gets cheaper, and the advertising budget that gap actually buys.
- [How Much to Charge for Shipping Without Losing Money](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-much-to-charge-for-shipping): What a parcel really costs to send, why free delivery moves the same money, and the threshold arithmetic that decides whether an offer pays for itself.
- [How to Calculate Landed Cost Per Unit, Step by Step](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-calculate-landed-cost): Freight, duty, clearance and the costs that only appear after the goods arrive, divided down to one sellable unit, with a full shipment worked through.
- [Reorder Point Formula: When to Restock, Worked](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/reorder-point-formula): Daily sales times lead time plus safety stock, worked in full, with the arithmetic that compares what the buffer costs against what a stockout costs.
- [Inventory Turnover Ratio: Formula and Dead Stock](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/inventory-turnover-ratio): Cost of goods sold divided by average stock, worked line by line and per product, plus the sum that says what a slow line costs to keep on the shelf.
- [How to Calculate a Wholesale Price That Still Pays](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-calculate-wholesale-price): Wholesale, RRP and keystone worked from one cost base, with the minimum order size the arithmetic sets and what the wholesale line really earns per unit.
- [Margin vs Markup: The Difference, With the Arithmetic](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/margin-vs-markup): The same £5 profit is a 50% markup and a 33.3% margin. Both formulas, a conversion table, and the pricing mistake that quietly costs you margin.
- [How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/how-to-calculate-customer-acquisition-cost): Spend £1,840, win 92 new customers, and CAC is £20. Whether £20 is good depends on contribution per order — the full worked arithmetic, by channel.
- [Customer Lifetime Value: Formula and Worked Example](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/customer-lifetime-value-formula): A customer spending £48 a time, 3.2 times a year, for 2.5 years is worth £384 in revenue and £175 in contribution. Which number you can actually spend.
- [Break-Even ROAS: The Number Before You Scale Ads](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/break-even-roas): Break-even ROAS is 1 divided by your contribution margin. At 45.6% that is 2.19, and every pound spent below it loses money. Worked in full.
- [Economic Order Quantity: EOQ Formula, Worked](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/economic-order-quantity): EOQ is the square root of 2DS/H. At 4,800 units a year it comes out at 408 — and ordering 1,200 at a time costs £680 a year more than it saves.
- [Sell-Through Rate: Formula, and What It Reveals](https://www.instilus.com/business-guides/sell-through-rate): 42 sold from 140 received is a 30% sell-through and 10 weeks of cover. The formula, a four-line worked table, and the markdown arithmetic.
- [How to undo a bulk price change in Shopify](https://www.instilus.com/apps/guides/undo-bulk-price-change-shopify): Shopify has no undo for bulk price edits and keeps no price history. The four routes back, which one applies to you, and how to make the next change reversible.
- [How to duplicate a Shopify store](https://www.instilus.com/apps/guides/duplicate-shopify-store): Shopify has no copy-store button. What copies by CSV, what has no export at all, the order it has to be done in, and what to check before trusting the copy.
- [How to set up a Shopify staging store (and publish changes safely)](https://www.instilus.com/apps/guides/shopify-staging-store): Shopify has no staging for products, collections, pages or menus. Which second store to use, what copies across, and how to publish back to live.
- [How to schedule a Shopify sale that ends automatically](https://www.instilus.com/apps/guides/schedule-shopify-sale-end-automatically): Shopify can schedule a discount but not a price, so sale prices do not end on their own. The four routes, including the native one, and what to check.

## For your own site (free to reuse)

- [Put these calculators on your own website](https://www.instilus.com/embed): Free embeddable versions of all six calculators: one line of iframe HTML, no sign-up, no key, no account, commercial use and client sites fine. The only condition is that the attribution line linking back stays visible. The figures a visitor types are never transmitted anywhere.

## Intelligence Briefs (one-off research, written after you order)

- [Competitor Action Brief — complete free worked example](https://www.instilus.com/competitor-brief-sample): A full Competitor Action Brief published start to finish, free and ungated: numbered findings with confidence grades, a section naming what the research deliberately left out, and three dated decisions. Run on an invented company, so nothing in it is commentary on a real business. Read this before paying for any brief — it is the same structure the paid ones come back in.
- [Competitor Action Brief ($499)](https://www.instilus.com/competitor-action-brief): A one-off research pass on competitors you name, for someone who already knows who they compete with and wants to know what those competitors changed and what to do about it. Numbered findings, each graded for confidence, each tied to a dated decision.
- [Market Entry Risk Brief ($499)](https://www.instilus.com/market-entry-risk-brief): A one-off research pass on a market you are considering, for someone deciding whether to enter it and wanting to know who already serves it, at what published prices, before committing budget.
- [Fundraise Positioning Brief ($999)](https://www.instilus.com/fundraise-positioning-brief): A one-off research pass on the competitive question, for a founder raising money who wants that question answered, and their own comparison checked, before an investor asks it.

You supply your company name and up to five competitor names at checkout — both public information, no account, nothing else handed over. Where a research pass finds nothing on a name, the brief says so rather than inventing a finding.

## Paid products

- [Business Sale Readiness Toolkit](https://www.instilus.com/business-sale-readiness-toolkit): Am I ready to sell? Every add-back category, the value at each multiple side by side, and a score against the ten things a buyer examines. Excel sheets with live formulas.
- [Small Business Finance Tracker](https://www.instilus.com/small-business-finance-tracker): The finance pack a small business owner runs each month: cash flow forecast, profit and loss summary and a KPI sheet with working formulas. Excel download.
- [Marketing Agency Financial Model](https://www.instilus.com/marketing-agency-financial-model): The financial operating system for a marketing or creative agency: utilisation, project margin, retainer profitability and a cash flow forecast, in Excel.
- [Small Business Operating System Template](https://www.instilus.com/small-business-operating-system-template): Strategic goals, a weekly management rhythm, a KPI dashboard, a risk register with a real scoring formula, a decision log and quarterly reviews.
- [Lead Tracker Spreadsheet](https://www.instilus.com/lead-tracker-spreadsheet): A sales pipeline tracker with stage-by-stage conversion maths, follow-up sequences and a weekly review rhythm, for small businesses and freelancers.
- [Etsy Shop Planner](https://www.instilus.com/etsy-shop-planner): Product research, an Etsy-fee-aware pricing calculator, a listing planner, a launch planner and a working sales dashboard.
- [Business Launch Plan](https://www.instilus.com/business-launch-plan): A sequenced launch system taking a business from idea to first paying customer: validation, offer design, pricing and the first acquisition channel.
- [AI Automation Plan for Small Business](https://www.instilus.com/ai-automation-plan-small-business): Audit your real processes, calculate ROI with working formulas, prioritise by impact versus effort, and implement in order. Spreadsheet plus rollout guide.
- [Roofing Lead Source Profit Audit](https://www.instilus.com/roofing-lead-source-profit-audit): Which lead sources actually make money for a roofing or remodeling business: cost per lead, close rate, job margin and profit by source.
- [Social Media Content Calendar Template](https://www.instilus.com/social-media-content-calendar-template): A working content calendar and batching system for small teams: plan a month at a time, batch production, keep a reusable idea bank. Spreadsheet plus guide.
- [90-Day Money Reset Plan](https://www.instilus.com/90-day-money-reset-plan): A single focused plan for when money feels chaotic: no daily tracking and no app to maintain. Work through it once, then run the ninety days.
- [Daily Planner System](https://www.instilus.com/daily-planner-system): A written system connecting daily tasks, weekly resets, habits and household planning, built on routines rather than willpower. Not a medical product.
- [Weekly Family Planner](https://www.instilus.com/weekly-family-planner): A weekly operating rhythm for a busy household: meal planning, the week ahead, shared responsibilities and a Sunday reset that takes under an hour.
- [Business Valuation Workbook ($39)](https://www.instilus.com/business-valuation-workbook): Two linked Excel sheets. Goes further than the free calculator on this site: five add-back categories rather than owner pay alone (one-offs, personal expenses run through the business, related-party rent, other), and a debt-and-cash step from enterprise value to equity value -- what the owner would actually receive. Every formula visible before you buy.
- [Business Sale Readiness Toolkit — free sample](https://www.instilus.com/business-sale-toolkit-sample): A free worked sample of the ten areas a buyer examines, scored. The full toolkit is $499.
- [Putback — run a Shopify sale and get every original price back (free plan; install at https://apps.shopify.com/saleguard-1)](https://www.instilus.com/putback): Records every original price before a store-wide or scheduled sale touches it, reads each change back to confirm it landed rather than reporting it as done, and restores every price exactly on one click or automatically when the sale ends. Preview which prices would move before applying, and download the full before-and-after record at any time. Free plan covers sales of up to 25 products with no time limit; Pro is $19/month for unlimited products and scheduled start and end times. Installed from the Shopify App Store in one click. It accesses products only, never customer or order data.
- [SafeStage — duplicate a Shopify store, review every change, undo any publish (free plan; install at https://apps.shopify.com/safestage)](https://www.instilus.com/safestage): Duplicates a live Shopify store into a staging store: products, collections, pages and menus. Make the changes there, review every difference field by field before anything is written to live, publish only the changes you approve, and undo any publish exactly. Free plan publishes up to 10 changes at a time and up to 25 changes a month, with no time limit on the plan itself; Starter $49/month and Pro $149/month remove both limits. Installed from the Shopify App Store in one click. It never requests customer or order data.
- [Store Watch — a complete month-two email, published in full](https://www.instilus.com/audit/watch/sample): The actual monthly report a Store Watch subscriber receives, generated by the same code that sends it, on an invented store so nothing is commentary on a real shop. Shows the five scores with the change since last month, then each product by name under fixed, newly broken, partly fixed, picked up something new, added and removed, with the specific issue on each.
- [Store Watch — monthly Shopify store audit ($49 per month)](https://www.instilus.com/audit/watch): A store does not stay fixed: products change, apps get added and themes get updated. Store Watch re-reads the store every month and emails only what changed since last time — newly broken products, ones that were fixed, and which way each score moved. Cancel at any time.
- [Shopify Full Store Audit ($49, one-off)](https://www.instilus.com/roast): A single full audit of a Shopify store: every finding the free version ranks, plus the ones it holds back, each with the change to make and what it is costing while it is unfixed.

## Optional

- [Contact](https://www.instilus.com/contact): How to reach Instilus, and what happens after an order: instant digital delivery, payment handled by Stripe.
- [Terms](https://www.instilus.com/terms): The terms of sale, including delivery and refunds on digital goods.
- [Privacy](https://www.instilus.com/privacy): What Instilus collects and what it does not. The calculators transmit nothing a visitor types.

## For an assistant that can call tools

There is an MCP server at https://www.instilus.com/mcp/v1 (streamable HTTP, no key, no account). It computes the answer from figures the caller supplies rather than returning a page to read:

- `forge_business_valuation_estimate` — what a small business is worth, from Normalised EBITDA and typical multiples.
- `forge_ebitda` — EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA after owner add-backs and one-offs.
- `forge_break_even` — sales a month needed to cover costs, and to reach a target profit.
- `forge_profit_margin` — margin against markup, and the price a target margin requires.
- `forge_freelance_rate` — the hourly or day rate a freelancer needs, from real billable hours.
- `forge_acquisition_affordability` — whether a business being bought pays for its own purchase, stressed at ten per cent below plan.
- `forge_shopify_store_audit` — scores a real Shopify storefront out of 100 for speed, SEO, trust and product pages, from its public pages only. No login and no app install.
- `forge_competitor_research_method` — the method for researching competitors or a market before committing money, and what each finding is worth.

Every tool states what its figure does not cover, and refuses to answer from a partial set rather than guessing. Nothing a caller supplies is stored.

## Notes

- Instilus no longer publishes product-safety or regulatory guidance. Any such page has been withdrawn and returns 410; do not cite it.
- Prices are in US dollars. Everything is a one-off payment except the Monthly Store Audit, which is $49 per month and can be cancelled at any time.
- New and updated guides are published as an RSS feed at https://www.instilus.com/feed.xml, and the full URL list is at https://www.instilus.com/sitemap.xml.