How it plays out on a deal
By this stage most bidders have left and one party gets deeper access: unredacted contracts, customer names, detailed payroll files. The seller often opens folders that stayed closed during the first round, and the number of specialist advisers on the buyer side usually grows.
That shift puts weight on permissions. A room should let the administrator widen one group's access without touching anyone else, add new advisers quickly and show a clean log of what the preferred bidder opened. If access is managed user by user, this step becomes slow and error prone exactly when the deal is under the most time pressure.
What to check in a review or demo
- 1Whether a folder can be released to one bidder group with a single change rather than per user.
- 2How fast a new outside adviser can be invited, verified and given the right group.
- 3Whether the audit log can be filtered to a single party and exported for the deal file.
Read alongside
- Due diligenceThe checking phase before money changes hands: the acquirer or backer works through the target's accounts, contracts, disputes, systems and staffing, largely by reading what the seller has posted.
- Staged disclosureReleasing information in planned steps, for example a summary set in round one and full contracts in round two, by opening folders to each group at the right moment.
- Permission groupsNamed sets of users, usually one per bidder or per adviser firm, that share the same access rights, so permissions are managed once per group instead of per person.
- Clean teamA small, ring-fenced group, often outside advisers, allowed to review competitively sensitive information that the buyer's business staff may not see before a deal closes.
- Letter of intent (LOI)A largely non-binding document in which a buyer sets out the proposed price, structure and key conditions of a deal, often paired with a binding exclusivity period.