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Guide

Business succession: a plan everyone can actually read.

Most owners of family and closely held businesses in the United States will hand over the company at some point, whether to the next generation, to a management team, to employees through an ownership plan, or to a co-owner under a buy-sell agreement. The plan usually involves several professionals at once: an estate planning attorney, a CPA, a financial advisor, an appraiser and sometimes a lender.

Each of them needs some of the paperwork and none of them needs all of it. This guide covers the documents a succession plan typically draws on and how to share them so the process stays private. It is not legal, tax or financial advice; your advisors design the plan.

The documents a succession plan draws on

Ownership and governance

  • Articles of incorporation or organization, bylaws or the LLC operating agreement, and amendments.
  • Stock certificates or membership ledgers, and the current ownership table.
  • Any buy-sell agreement, including its valuation method and how a buy-out is funded.
  • Board or member minutes approving earlier ownership changes.

Value and finances

  • Recent business valuations or appraisals and the reports behind them.
  • Several years of financial statements and business tax returns.
  • Key person and life insurance policies that fund a buy-out.
  • Loan agreements that may restrict a change of ownership.

The people

  • The owner's estate plan documents that touch the business, shared only with the advisors who need them.
  • Employment or retention agreements for key managers.
  • Documents for an employee stock ownership plan, if that route is under consideration.

Your attorney and CPA will tell you which of these matter for your plan and in what order. Gift and estate tax questions in particular depend on facts only they can weigh.

A room for each audience

Succession planning is personal. Family members who are not active in the business may need to see the estate plan but not the managers' compensation. The management team may need the financials and the buy-sell terms but not the owner's personal estate documents. The appraiser needs the numbers and nothing about the family.

ShareAndGo handles this with groups. Each group sees only the folders you allow, and a folder it cannot see does not appear for it. You can keep one room for the whole plan, with the attorney, the CPA, the appraiser and family members in separate groups, or open separate rooms when the conversations are truly separate.

Getting started

  1. 1

    Gather in one place

    Drag your existing folders into a room. The structure comes with them, and ShareAndGo can read each file, including old scans, and suggest where it belongs.

  2. 2

    List what is missing

    Use a document request list to track what each advisor has asked for, who is finding it and what has been provided.

  3. 3

    Invite each advisor

    Advisors confirm their email with a six-digit code and see only their group's folders.

  4. 4

    Keep the history

    When the valuation or the buy-sell agreement is revised, upload it as a new version and the earlier one remains in the history.

Discretion matters as much as security

News that an owner is planning to step back can unsettle staff, customers and lenders long before anything is decided. Keep sensitive material view-only, so readers see pages watermarked with their name, email address and the date, and the original file is never sent to their browser.

Ask each visitor to accept your confidentiality terms before they enter, and ShareAndGo keeps a record of who accepted and when. Every view, download and change is written to an audit log chained so alterations are detectable.

Succession plans take years. Invitations can carry an end date that you extend in one click, so an advisor who finishes their part does not keep access indefinitely.

Questions

Can family members use it without an account?
Yes. Invited visitors confirm their email with a six-digit code. Your own team signs in through MyAndGo.
Should the will or trust live in the business room?
Only the parts your attorney says the business advisors need. Keep them in a separate folder with its own group.
Can we share the valuation but stop it being forwarded?
Make it view-only. It is watermarked for each reader and cannot be downloaded.

Related guides

Preparing for a business valuation

The number most succession plans start from.

A partner buy-out

When a co-owner is the buyer.

Board materials

Governance records worth keeping in order.

All guides

Every business process we cover.