M&A Due Diligence Checklist – Word DOCX

BENEFITS OF THIS DOWNLOADABLE WORD DOCUMENT

1. Covers eight diligence workstreams -- Quality of Earnings, Working Capital, Commercial, Tech, HCM, Legal, Tax and Integration -- so nothing falls between owners.
2. Tags all 62 line items HIGH, MED or LOW severity, so a small team knows what to chase first when the clock is short.
3. States the question each item is actually trying to answer, which keeps a request list from turning into a document scavenger hunt.

M&A (MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS) WORD DESCRIPTION

M&A Due Diligence Checklist (docx): Download a buy-side M&A framework covering earnings, legal, tax, commercial, and integration workstreams. Editable checklist. M&A Due Diligence Checklist is a 3-page Word document available for immediate download upon purchase.

Buy-side M&A diligence framework. Eight workstreams (Quality of Earnings, Working Capital, Commercial, Tech, HCM, Legal, Tax, Integration), 62 line items each tagged HIGH / MED / LOW severity with the question it answers.

Everything quoted here is measured from the file itself rather than described from memory: the document contains 70 structured table rows, 62 checkboxes, 222 paragraphs. Nothing is locked, hidden or password protected, so every table, prompt and checklist item can be edited, deleted or extended to fit how your organisation actually works.

This is built as a working document, not a reference read. The structure carries the thinking – what to ask, in what order, and what to do with the answer – while the specifics stay yours to fill in. Placeholders are marked clearly so you can see at a glance what still needs a decision, and the formatting is deliberately plain so it survives being pasted into your own template, sent to a counterparty, or dropped into a data room without looking borrowed.

How to put it to work. Start by reading it end to end once so you know what it asks for and where the gaps in your own information are. Then work top down, filling the placeholders with your specifics and deleting anything that does not apply to your situation – over-inclusion is the most common way a document like this loses credibility with the person reading it. Where a section calls for a judgement rather than a fact, write the judgement down explicitly along with the reasoning, because that is the part a counterparty, an investment committee or an auditor will actually interrogate. Finally, save your completed version as the house standard so the next person starts from your refined copy rather than from this one.

What this is and is not. It is a structure and a starting point built on how these documents are actually assembled in practice – the order of the argument, the questions that get asked, and the details that get missed when someone works from a blank page. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it is not a substitute for review by a qualified professional where your situation calls for one. Nothing in it is jurisdiction-specific boilerplate you should sign without reading.

Typical users are operators, founders, consultants and deal teams who need a credible starting point today rather than a blank page. Because the file is fully editable, it is equally useful as a one-off for a single engagement or as the base you standardise on and reuse across a portfolio, a client book or a repeatable internal process. It is delivered as a single Microsoft Word file, and opens in Word, Google Docs and Pages without conversion.

Source: Best Practices in M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions), Due Diligence Word: M&A Due Diligence Checklist Word (DOCX) Document, ModelStack