Assuming the role as an investor or buyer in a merger or acquisition, or an investment deal involves extensive review and a thorough examination of many documents. This can be a time-consuming process, especially when parties are reviewing large amounts of information across a variety of due diligence areas such as financial, intellectual property and tax. To avoid confusion and minimize the risk that things are missed, it is important to make a comprehensive checklist of all the documents to be reviewed during the review.

A thorough business due diligence checklist will help the reviewer to find important information and make sure that all aspects of the review are linked here taken care of. The human capital component of review, for instance will analyze the company’s employees as well as staff including their salaries and benefits. This might include a breakdown according to the employee’s position and a comparison of salaries of employees working in similar positions within their field or region. It will also investigate the policy and procedures of the company regarding hiring and firing, employee remuneration and incentives such as vacation and sick time and any contracts or the severance package.

Many of these due diligence areas will require input of experts and external consultants. It is a good idea to set a time frame for the review’s completion and define clear parameters to avoid delays, miscommunications, and duplicate work. Using a CRM program like DealRoom can help speed up the process by providing a single platform for all communications, documents and tasks to be streamlined.