The checklist supports the transition services playbook for M&A integration advisors. The owner conversation itself is laid out in the 30-minute owner meeting agenda; this page is the dated list you work from between that meeting and switch-off.
How to use the timeline
Run one copy per system the former parent still operates for the business: the email tenant, the ERP instance, the service-desk tool, file shares. A business with a staggered services schedule might have three copies with three different end dates.
Every item is metadata. You record what exists, roughly how much, for how long, in which system and who owns it. No item asks for an export, a sample, a screenshot or a login, and partners never handle the records themselves.
Each milestone has the same three columns:
- Check: one fact to write down.
- Who confirms: the person on either side of the deal who can state it.
- Default if skipped: what happens when nobody acts. Under transition services, the default is nearly always that the history stays in the former parent's system and is retired with it.
Milestone one: before the exit plan is announced
The exit plan is the moment the buyer tells its teams how and when each service ends. Once it is public, the parent group's teams start winding down and informal cleanup begins.
| Check | Who confirms | Default if skipped |
|---|---|---|
| Service end date and access end date for each system, separately | Buyer's IT lead, from the services schedule and the parent group's admin | The project plans to "end of the agreement" and access stops earlier than expected |
| Which record sets the purchase agreement transfers, excludes or shares | Buyer's counsel | Nobody knows whether the business can authorize anything about closed history |
| Who the record owner is after closing | Buyer's CFO or CEO | No one is able to approve an inventory |
| Whether the agreement allows exports of historical data, and through which route | Buyer's IT lead | The only export path is discovered after the service desk has closed |
| Separated-business headcount, not group headcount | Buyer's HR lead | Eligibility is judged on the wrong entity |
Milestone two: before cutover
Cutover moves what the business needs on Day 1. Live users, open orders and current customers are in scope; closed projects, resolved cases and former employees' accounts often are not.
| Check | Who confirms | Default if skipped |
|---|---|---|
| Which user accounts are scheduled to move, and how many are not | Buyer's IT lead or migration vendor | Unscheduled accounts stay in the old environment |
| Whether SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams content has its own migration plan | Buyer's IT lead | Email migration does not carry it, so it stays behind |
| Record types left outside the ERP and service-desk cutover, with rough counts and years | Buyer's IT lead with the finance and service leads | Closed history is retired with the parent's instance |
| Whether former-staff accounts are under a hold in the old environment | Parent group's admin, via the buyer's IT lead | Deleted accounts may never become inactive mailboxes |
| The named preservation lead and the date by which an approved inventory is preserved | Record owner | Preservation waits on a decision nobody has been asked to make |
SharePoint
OneDriveTwo Microsoft facts explain the second and fourth rows. Cross-tenant mailbox migration moves mailbox data only; after a successful move the source mailbox is deleted and replaced by a mail-routing object in the old tenant. And a mailbox becomes inactive only if a hold or retention policy is applied before the user account is deleted. A hold added later does not recover it.
Illustrative. In a 240-person distribution business split from its parent group, the cutover check found about 60 former-staff accounts outside every move schedule and eight years of resolved service tickets left out of the new service-desk tool. Those two lines, with the CFO as record owner and the IT lead as preservation lead, were the whole output of this milestone.
Milestone three: before the old systems are switched off
This is the last point at which the preservation lead can act. The checks confirm that the decisions made at milestone two actually happened.
| Check | Who confirms | Default if skipped |
|---|---|---|
| The approved inventory was preserved by the preservation lead, on what date, and where it now sits | Buyer's IT lead | An approved inventory exists on paper only |
| The subscription stage of the old environment, if it is being closed rather than kept | Parent group's admin | During Disabled only admins can reach and back up data, and for most offers that stage lasts 90 days before deletion |
| A recorded decision for anything still left behind: keep, delete or review for licensing | Record owner | The parent's retirement schedule decides |
| Where the decision record is filed | Buyer's CFO's office | Nobody can later show who decided and when |
The one flag worth raising
If access end is near and the preservation lead row is still blank, tell the record owner directly. That is real urgency, drawn from the company's own verified dates. It is not a program deadline, and nothing about SourceX makes it more urgent.
When the checklist is complete
A finished checklist answers the page's question in one line per system: who preserved what, by when. It also tells the owner whether there is closed history worth a conversation. It cannot tell anyone whether that history has value; only a SourceX review can.
If the owner wants to explore licensing, disclose first: you are a SourceX referral partner and may receive a reward if a qualifying license completes; SourceX funds it separately and it never reduces the company's payment. Then confirm the baseline: 50+ full-time employees at peak in the separated business (contractors excluded), a documented operating history, rights to license the records and an authorized contact. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 70% of the data is in English.
The introduction goes to the buyer's CEO, who can authorize a licensing discussion, and to the record owner, using the introduction email for this moment. Partners sign the Channel Partner Agreement before submitting, and the first valid introduction within the 90-day window is credited when the company submits a verified application. Unknown until SourceX reviews it: the rights review result, any dataset fit and any offer. The TSA explainer, the IT handover checklist, the MSP offboarding checklist and the CFO checklist for a data licensing agreement cover adjacent steps.
Next step
Refer a company. No cap on rewards. Default reward on a company's first qualifying transaction: the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of the first Closing pay 15%. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, including the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
If the preservation lead row is filled before access ends and the record owner opts in, register as a partner, confirm the separated business on who qualifies, and read the program terms before you send the introduction.