Two deadlines started running the moment closing happened, whether anyone noticed or not. Here is what actually needs to close inside the first fourteen days.
Key takeaways
STEP 01 OF 10
The single most operationally disruptive gap in the first fortnight is a payroll run or a supplier payment that cannot clear because signing authority has not actually been updated at the bank, whatever the closing documents say. Confirm the new signing authorities are live at the bank itself, not just approved internally, before the first payroll cycle after closing — banks routinely need several business days’ notice, and a missed payroll run in week one does more damage to confidence than almost anything else on this list.
Build a specific checklist item for every account the acquired company holds, not just the primary operating account — a forgotten secondary account or a merchant-services provider still pointing at the previous owner’s authority is a common, avoidable gap.
STEP 02 OF 10
If the acquisition is structured as an asset purchase using the GST/HST joint election under ETA s. 167(1), the filing clock is already running the moment closing happens, not something to revisit once the dust settles. The recipient, if a registrant, must file the election “not later than the day on or before which the return…is required to be filed for the recipient’s first reporting period” in which tax would otherwise have become payable ETA s. 167(1).
That deadline is tied to the acquiring entity’s own reporting period, which means it can arrive faster than a sponsor juggling several closing workstreams expects — confirm the purchasing entity’s GST/HST registration status and reporting frequency in the first week, not as a follow-up item for the accountant to handle whenever convenient.
STEP 03 OF 10
The ordinary director’s duty under CBCA s. 122(1) — to act honestly, in good faith, and with the care a reasonably prudent person would exercise — applies to any new director from the moment they are appointed, not from some later point once they have settled in CBCA s. 122(1). If new directors are being appointed as part of the transaction, confirm the corporate records reflect them immediately, alongside the CBCA’s residency requirement that at least twenty-five percent of directors be resident Canadians, or at least one where the board has fewer than four CBCA s. 105(3).
This is a paperwork item with real consequences if skipped: a board resolution that was never actually passed, or a director acting without being properly appointed, creates avoidable governance risk in a period when the fund can least afford a dispute over who actually had authority to act.
STEP 04 OF 10
Map the acquired company’s chart of accounts into the fund’s standardized reporting taxonomy in the first week, while its own finance function still has full institutional context and before the transition itself creates staffing gaps. Waiting until the first month-end close to start this work means running the fortnight’s most important financial task from a position of catch-up rather than control; see one reporting pack for every company you own for how the mapping itself should be structured once it starts.
The same week is also the right time to confirm which of the acquired company’s own policies — inventory costing, revenue recognition timing — will be reconciled through a consolidation bridge rather than changed immediately; deciding this early avoids a month-end surprise when the numbers do not tie out the way anyone expected.
STEP 05 OF 10
Statutory continuity of employment applies automatically in Ontario and British Columbia once an employee continues working for the business after the sale per Ontario’s ESA guide, but the payroll system itself does not update itself — confirm every employee’s original hire date, not the closing date, is correctly reflected in the new payroll setup within the first fortnight. A payroll migration that silently resets tenure to the closing date creates a notice and severance calculation error that surfaces only when someone is eventually terminated, often years later.
Cross-check this against the acquired company’s own historical payroll records rather than relying on a single summary handed over at closing — a hire-date error is invisible until it matters, and by then the error is expensive to unwind.
STEP 06 OF 10
Identify, in the first few days, the small number of customer and supplier relationships that matter disproportionately to the acquired business, and make personal contact before the second week ends. This is the same discipline covered in retaining staff and customers through a change of owner, but the first fortnight is when the timing actually has to happen — a relationship left unaddressed for a month reads as indifference, whatever the reason for the delay actually was.
Prioritize by revenue concentration, not by seniority of contact — a mid-level buyer at a customer representing fifteen percent of revenue matters more in week one than a senior contact at an account representing one percent, however the relationship was previously managed.
STEP 07 OF 10
Take physical or digital custody of the acquired company’s corporate minute book, share register and material contracts in the first fortnight, and confirm they are complete — a diligence checklist run before closing typically flags gaps in these records as a standard first-time-buyer diligence checklist recommends, but confirming the actual handover happened is a separate, easily-missed step.
Set the retention clock correctly from day one: federal law requires books and records to be kept for six years from the end of the last taxation year to which they relate ITA s. 230(4)(b), including in electronic format where the records are electronic — a rule that applies to the acquired company’s own historical records, not just to anything generated after closing.
STEP 08 OF 10
Confirm the acquired company’s insurance coverage — general liability, property, and any regulatory coverage the business is required to carry — is genuinely continuous through the closing date, not assumed to be, since a lapse of even a few days can leave a real exposure gap that nobody notices until a claim arises. Where coverage needs to be rewritten in the new owner’s name, get that done inside the fortnight rather than treating it as an administrative item that can wait.
Confirm separately, in the purchase agreement itself, that liability for anything arising before closing sits with the seller under the negotiated indemnity, not silently with the buyer by default — insurance continuity and indemnity allocation are two different protections, and a fortnight-one review should check both.
STEP 09 OF 10
Reconcile the acquired company’s trailing financial records against the net working capital figure used at closing while the numbers are still fresh and the people who can explain them are still available. A true-up dispute months later, once the seller’s team has dispersed and institutional memory of a specific account balance has faded, is far harder and more expensive to resolve than the same question asked in week one or two.
This is also the point to confirm the purchase price allocation agreed at closing matches what actually gets booked in the acquired company’s opening balance sheet — a mismatch discovered later complicates both the fund’s own reporting pack and any future tax filing that relies on it.
STEP 10 OF 10
Set a specific, dated review at day fourteen, not a vague intention to check in after a few weeks, to confirm every item on this list actually closed rather than merely started. Treat the fortnight as the first, hardest-deadline milestone inside the fund’s broader plan; see writing a hundred-day plan for a new acquisition for how the fortnight fits into the fuller sequence, and screening a target in the first two weeks for the pre-close mirror of this same two-week discipline.
A fortnight that ends with an honest list of what is still open is more useful than one declared complete without a genuine review — the items most likely to have slipped are exactly the unglamorous ones on this list: signing authority at a secondary account, a hire date entered incorrectly, an insurance policy still showing the previous owner’s name.
Two deadlines began running at the moment of closing, not at the moment anyone got around to addressing them: the GST/HST joint election’s filing deadline tied to the buyer’s first reporting period, and the six-year records retention clock on everything the acquired company already holds. Neither waits for the fund to finish onboarding — both are worth confirming explicitly inside the fortnight rather than assumed to be someone else’s problem for later.
The governance duty under CBCA s. 122(1) is a third clock of the same kind: it does not start once a new director feels settled into the role, it starts the moment the appointment takes effect.
Not everything needs to happen in the first fortnight, and treating every item as equally urgent dilutes attention from the handful that actually are. Banking and signing authority, employee continuity in the payroll system, and the tax-election clock cannot wait. Rebranding decisions, a full operational review, and most vendor renegotiations can, and usually should, since a hasty change made in week one with incomplete information is harder to reverse than a decision made after the acquired business has had a few months to settle.
Use the fortnight to protect what is time-sensitive and gather information on everything else, rather than trying to resolve every open question before day fourteen.
Name one deal-team member as the single point of accountability for the fortnight, even where individual items are delegated to specialists such as counsel or an external controller. A checklist with no single owner tends to produce confident assumptions that each item is someone else’s responsibility.
Use them, but verify independently — a seller’s team can genuinely help confirm records are complete and relationships are properly introduced, but the fund still needs its own confirmation that signing authority, payroll and tax elections are actually in place, not simply told they are.
Yes, materially — a share deal generally preserves the existing legal entity and its registrations, while an asset deal often requires new registrations, a fresh GST/HST election, and more active confirmation that licences and permits have actually transferred. Confirm which structure applies before assuming either checklist.
It is the first, most time-pressured slice of it, not a separate exercise. The fortnight protects what has a running clock or a hard deadline; the rest of the hundred-day plan covers everything that benefits from more deliberate sequencing.
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