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Mutual Action Plan Template

Three documents and four sheets that take the buyer's procurement apart into the steps it actually contains, each with a named owner.

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What you get

Pack of 7 files: 3 documents, 4 spreadsheets

Mutual Action Plan Template
  • Buyer Process InterviewDocument
  • Mutual Action PlanDocument
  • Milestone TrackerSpreadsheet
  • Dependency RegisterSpreadsheet
  • Kickoff NoteDocument
  • Slippage LogSpreadsheet
  • Step Duration HistorySpreadsheet
RiverMutual Action Plan Template

Critical path read, 8 September

Ostara Logistics Group, $284,000, signature target 30 September

Steps in the plan17, after four collapsed rows were taken apart
On the critical path6
Days lost so far35, across two steps, with the signature date unmoved
Deadline behind the deadline26 September, when Ostara's capital budget closes

1. The path, backwards from signature

StepSideDays it takesStarted
Accessibility conformance reportUs15No
Security review sign-offOstara19Blocked
Requisition raised and approvedOstara8No
Redlines returned and resolvedBoth26No, counsel back 15 Sep

2. The arithmetic nobody had done

Sixty-eight days of remaining path against twenty-two days of calendar. The signature date moved three weeks ago; it just had not been written down anywhere.

3. The sentence

Tomas Ballard has to get the accessibility report booked for 9 September, or Hana Vance cannot sign off, the requisition cannot be raised, and Ostara's capital budget closes without us in it.

Five of the six steps on the path came out of a single row originally labelled Procurement and security. Nothing on that row had an owner with a name.

Search this and page one is unanimous on the method. Six to twelve milestones, an owner per milestone from the correct side, dates derived backwards from the buyer's go-live, and a status of on track, at risk or overdue. One guide states the doctrine outright: anything more granular belongs in the seller's CRM, not the shared plan. That advice is why procurement is a single row on every plan in circulation, and why the weeks nobody planned for are all inside it.

Procurement is not a step. It is a supplier registration in their portal, a tax form, an insurance certificate with additional insured wording, a code of conduct signature, a bank verification callback, and a requisition needing a cost centre code. A US buyer wants an IRS Form W-9 before anybody can pay you, and a W-8BEN-E if you are not American. Six pieces, four owners, two organisations, and lead times running from same day to a fortnight.

The second thing nobody ships is a memory. Dates get edited in place, so a step that has slipped four times reads exactly like one that never slipped. The original date stays in its own column; every movement is logged with who moved it. Durations come from your own closed deals, not a default. Then the redline that comes back, the proposal whose price has its own expiry date, and the buyer's own onboarding once security clears are somebody else's job, and the rest sits in the template library and the tool index.

The rows every other plan collapses, and the history every other plan overwrites

Milestone Tracker with the original and current date side by side, Dependency Register showing what blocks what, and Slippage Log with the running total per step.

Mutual Action Plan Template
RiverMilestone Tracker

Milestone Tracker

Illustrative rows for a fictional industrial software deal. Nine of seventeen shown. The four procurement rows came out of one line originally labelled Procurement.

StepSideOwnerArtifact requiredOriginalCurrentStatus
Security questionnaire returnedUsP. NcubeCompleted CAIQ and audit report7 Aug14 AugDone
Security review sign-offOstaraH. Vance21 Aug4 SepAt risk
Accessibility conformance reportUsT. BallardReport for the 2026 release21 Aug11 SepOverdue
Supplier registration in CoupaUsR. KavanaghCompany profile and bank details28 Aug28 AugDone
Tax form submittedUsR. KavanaghIRS Form W-928 Aug28 AugDone
Insurance certificate reissuedUsR. KavanaghAdditional insured wording1 Sep15 SepAt risk
Bank verification callbackOstaraUnnamed4 Sep4 SepNot started
Requisition raisedOstaraM. FenwickQuote with cost centre code8 Sep8 SepBlocked
SignatureOstaraA. SorensenOrder form30 Sep30 SepNot started

The unnamed row is the point of the sheet. Nobody at Ostara has named a contact in accounts payable, so a two-day step has no owner and cannot be scheduled. It is also the easiest thing in the plan to ask for.

Original and current sit in separate columns on purpose. The accessibility report reads overdue by twenty-one days rather than due on the eleventh.

RiverDependency Register

Dependency Register

What is waiting on what. Artifacts and people count as dependencies, because both stop a step from starting.

DependencyTypeBlocksSideExistsLead time
Accessibility conformance report, 2026 releaseArtifactSecurity sign-offUsNo15 days
Two unanswered security follow-upsPredecessorSecurity sign-offUsNo3 days
Certificate naming Ostara as additional insuredArtifactSupplier activationUsNo7 days
Named contact in accounts payablePersonBank verificationOstaraNo2 days
J. Whitlock returns from leavePersonLegal redlinesOstaraNoBack 15 Sep
Signature authority above 250kApprovalSignatureOstaraYesCleared
Fiscal year end, 26 SeptemberApprovalRequisition approvedOstaraYesNine days of slack

Three of the five open dependencies are ours. That is the useful finding, because a blocker on the seller's side is an internal escalation this afternoon rather than a question for the champion.

The bottom row is the deadline behind the deadline. Ostara's capital budget closes on 26 September, so the signature date has nine days of cover rather than the thirty everybody assumed.

RiverSlippage Log

Slippage Log

Every movement, including the ones that did not touch the signature date. Especially those.

LoggedStepFromToMoved byReason givenTotal lost
29 JulBusiness case reviewed31 Jul4 AugM. FenwickBoard offsite ran over4
6 AugQuestionnaire returned7 Aug14 AugP. NcubeTwo answers needed engineering7
20 AugSecurity sign-off21 Aug28 AugH. VanceReviewer assigned late7
29 AugSecurity sign-off28 Aug4 SepH. VanceFollow-ups unanswered14
29 AugAccessibility report21 Aug4 SepT. BallardNo report for current release14
8 SepAccessibility report4 Sep11 SepT. BallardAudit slot unavailable until 9 Sep21

Thirty-five days lost and the signature date has never moved. On any plan that edits dates in place this deal reads amber at worst, because each revision erased the one before it and the slack was fictional from the start.

Sorted by side, four of the six movements are ours. That makes this an operations problem rather than a qualification problem, and operations problems are fixable this week.

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What's in the pack

01

Mutual Action Plan

The shared document the buyer reads and edits, ending with the single step standing between them and the date, and the deadlines that are not yours to move.

02

Milestone Tracker

Every step decomposed until it has one named person against it, with the artifact it requires and the original and current dates in separate columns.

03

Dependency Register

What blocks what, counting missing artifacts and absent people as dependencies alongside predecessor steps, each marked by side so you know who to chase.

04

Slippage Log

Every date movement with who moved it, which side they are on, the reason they gave, and the running total per step. Blocked is recorded separately from moved.

05

Step Duration History

How long each step really takes across your own closed deals, with the sample beside every figure and no history written where the sample is short.

06

Buyer Process Interview

The questions that get a buyer to describe how their organisation actually buys, including the one about when their budget period closes.

07

Kickoff Note

Written on signature day for whoever runs delivery, carrying the commitments made in passing on calls that would otherwise survive only in the customer's memory.

How to use it

  1. 1

    Open in River, or take it blank

    Open the pack in River and describe the deal, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and fill them in yourself.

  2. 2

    Interview the buyer's process

    Ask what actually happened the last time they bought something. A hypothetical process is an org chart; a remembered one has the delays in it.

  3. 3

    Decompose until every row has a name

    Procurement, security, legal and finance come apart into their real pieces. Where nobody can be named, the step stays with the owner marked unnamed.

  4. 4

    Date it from your own closed deals

    Durations come from what these steps have really taken here, then the critical path gets read backwards from signature and the answer is one sentence.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes. Three Word documents and four CSV sheets, downloaded as a zip, no signup. River is the optional half: it decomposes the buyer's process, dates it from your closed deals, and reads the critical path. Single-shot jobs live in the tool index.

Will the buyer actually fill this in with me?

They fill in the shared document, which is deliberately short. The tracker, the dependency register and the slippage log are yours. A buyer who sees a plan naming their own approval thresholds and their own budget close date usually starts correcting it, and corrections are the whole point.

Six to twelve milestones is the standard advice. Why break it?

Because that advice is what produces a plan with procurement as one row. A step nobody can put a name against is not a step. Keep the shared document short by all means; the tracker underneath it holds whatever number of rows the buyer's real process contains.

What if the deal is not enterprise?

Then most stages collapse honestly and the plan is short, which is a finding rather than a failure. The test is the same one either way: read each row aloud starting with a person's name. Where that works, leave it alone.

We have no history to date the steps from.

Step Duration History reads no history and says how many more closed deals it needs, rather than filling itself with a benchmark. Until then the plan uses the worst case you have observed, because a step you have never measured has simply not gone wrong in front of you yet.

What counts as a dependency worth recording?

Anything that stops a step from starting. A predecessor step, a person on leave, an approval threshold, portal access, and above all a document you do not have yet. An accessibility conformance report or a current audit report is weeks of lead time hiding as paperwork.

Where does the security review fit?

As several rows rather than one, and the answers themselves are a different job. The security questionnaire response pack handles what goes back to the reviewer; this space handles what their review blocks and how long it has been blocking it.

Sources

  1. IRSAbout Form W-9, Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification (opens in a new tab)
  2. IRSAbout Form W-8 BEN-E, Certificate of Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting (Entities) (opens in a new tab)
  3. itic.orgVPAT — Information Technology Industry Council (opens in a new tab)

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

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Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

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Find out which single step is holding the date

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and let it take the buyer's process apart first.

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