I'm in the early stages of selling my business and the disclosure forms are already eating my weekends. Does anyone have practical tips for getting through them without wanting to throw the laptop out the window? I'm not looking for legal advice, just how you stayed organized and sane.
Disclosure Forms
Everyday tips for filling out disclosure forms without losing your mind
Break it into sections and only do one section per sitting. I tried to do the whole thing in a weekend and it was a disaster. Also keep a running list of where every number came from, because they will ask for back up later.
What helped me was making a folder for every question on the form before I started writing. Sounds tedious but it saved me from digging through old emails at midnight.
Honest question — are you doing this yourself or is your broker helping? I found that a lot of the anxiety came from not knowing which questions actually mattered and which were boilerplate. Once someone walked me through the form once, it got much less intimidating.
Broker is involved but they're busy, so I'm doing the first pass. I like the folder idea. Did you keep phyiscal files or was it all digital?
All digital. Scanned anything paper and named files with the question number. Slightly obsessive but worth it.
Don't try to make it perfect on the first go. Mark anything uncertain with a note to come back to. I spent three hours on one line item, and the buyer's attorney asked a totally different question anyway. Also print the form and read it on paper once — typos pop out differently.
Timers. Sounds dumb but 45 minutes on, 15 off kept me from spiraling.
The financial sections were the worst for me. I ended up pulling my accountant in earlier than I planned. Not cheap, but it stopped me from guessing at numbers, which would have been worse.
Agree with DryCreek. Also, save every draft as a new version. I can't tell you how many times someone asked about a figure and I needed to see what the form said two weeks earlier.
Version control is a good call. I've been overwriting the same file, which is probably a bad habit. Any of you use a checklist to track which sections are done?
I just used a spreadsheet with each section and a status column. Nothing fancy. The bigger thing for me was not letting the form bleed into evenings — I set a hard stop at 7pm and closed the laptop.
Hard stop is underrated. Fatigue makes you sloppy and then you're redoing work anyway.
One more — write down the questions you had while filling it out, even if you didn't get an answer yet. By the time you talk to your broker or attorney you you'll have forgotten half of them. I kept a notes app open the whole time and it made the review calls much faster.
How long did everyone's first draft take? Mine took almost two weeks and I'm wondering if that's normal or if I'm just slow.
Two weeks is fine. Mine was about the same, and I know people who took longer. It's not a race, even if it feels like one.
Mine was three weekends. The form itself wasnt hard, it was the archaeology of finding old records.