Finding a debtor's SaaS and cloud accounts from bank statements

How do you find a closed company's cloud accounts?

Work from money, mail and identity: recurring charges on bank and card statements, vendor receipts in the mailbox, and single sign-on or domain records show which systems a company paid for and used. Combine the three sources and you can often rebuild a useful system list even when no one left an IT map.

A chapter 7 trustee, receiver or assignee often inherits a company where the IT lead has gone and credentials are unknown. The list you build is also the starting inventory for a preliminary SourceX fit check, because strong companies keep records across 10-15+ systems and long histories help.

Prerequisites

Before touching any account, confirm authority and scope.

• Written authority from the court order, appointment or assignment that lets you access company accounts
• Counsel's sign-off on access methods, since accessing accounts without authority can raise legal issues; check with your counsel and applicable law
• A preservation hold on email and drives, so reviewing statements does not trigger auto-deletion
• A custody log to record what you found and who touched it; the records custody log is a ready format
• The list of known holders from the statement of financial affairs, if one has been filed

Step-by-step: build the system list

1. Pull 12-24 months of bank, card and payables data. Filter recurring monthly or annual charges. Mark any payee that looks like a software, hosting or telecom vendor.
2. Classify each charge. Group into email and collaboration, storage and backup, CRM and sales, accounting and payroll, support and ticketing, engineering and hosting, telephony and call recording.
3. Search the mailbox for receipts. Look for terms such as invoice, subscription, renewal, receipt, welcome and verify your email. Receipts reveal the account owner email and plan.
4. Check identity records. Domain registrar and DNS records, SSO or identity provider logs, and verification emails show which services were tied to company addresses.
5. Review expense reports and procurement files. Employees often expensed tools that never reached the central ledger.
6. Look at card-on-file and app-store billing. Mobile app subscriptions and marketplace bills hide in separate statements.
7. Interview the last people with knowledge. The controller, office manager, IT contractor and departing admins can confirm what is live.
8. Record renewal and cancellation dates. An annual renewal can lapse and trigger deletion; the Rule 6004(h) stay page explains why those dates matter to a sale or license timeline.

What each source reveals

Common mistakes

A worked example (Illustrative)

Illustrative: a fictional 120-person logistics company closes. The card statement shows monthly charges to a shared-drive vendor, a ticketing tool and a call-recording service. Mail receipts add a CRM and an HR platform. Domain records point to a hosted email tenant. The trustee now has a seven-system list, two of which renew within 30 days. Counsel place holds on those two, and the list goes into the custody log. Only then does anyone consider a licensing introduction.

Turning the list into a starter inventory

Give every system one row with the same columns, so the estate can compare candidates quickly and a later data inventory has a head start.

What to say to the vendor

Send requests through counsel and keep the reply in the custody log.

When to stop the search

Stop when new sources only repeat systems already on the list, and say so in the log. Not every estate justifies a deep hunt. If the company never reached 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded) or kept almost everything in one tool, the list will be short and a licensing look may not be worth the time. Spend effort where several systems, multiple years of history and a reachable administrator point to a company that could pass a fit screen. A wind-down professional should also note the cost of the search against the likely benefit, since estate funds are limited and every hour is billed.

Rights and red flags before any introduction

A system list is not permission to license anything. Check who owns the records: material belonging to clients of an outsourcer or agency, mostly consumer personal data, or protected health information without authorization are red flags. See the guide on private credit lenders taking the keys if a secured lender claims control over the accounts, and the examiner guide if an investigation has preservation demands.

This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Confirm with your own counsel before acting.

Next step

Once you have a list of systems with years of history, run the company fit checker, a preliminary, non-binding screen that asks for no contact details, and read who qualifies. If it looks promising, register as a partner and introduce the company, or have the authorized representative apply at sourcex.si/apply.

Partners earn 25% of the eligible platform fees SourceX actually collects, capped at $100,000 per referred company, and only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee. No reward is guaranteed. Fiduciaries should check court disclosure and approval requirements first.