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Deal Close Checklist That Names the Signer
The number your buyer's authority rules actually run on, the person it requires, and the date every step behind them starts.
River's close plan starts at the signature block and works backwards, which is the reverse of how a close checklist usually gets built. Give it the deal in numbers and the date it has to be signed by. It derives the total commitment your buyer's authority rules measure, names the approval that number triggers, and puts a start date on every step behind it. What comes back is a signature chain with owners, not a list of tasks with a deadline on the end.
Unlike a close plan that lists milestones and assigns them, this one is built out of two numbers the checklists never touch. The first is total commitment, which is what an approval threshold actually measures, and it is rarely the annual figure a rep quotes. The second is the buyer's own signing calendar, since a finance review that meets once a month turns a signature into a slot. Both are knowable weeks out. Both are usually discovered in the last five days.
Built for the account executive holding a date, the deal desk deciding whether to believe it, and the manager reading a forecast built on it. Run it the day a verbal yes arrives, or a close date slips again and nobody can say which step caused it. Build one for each deal that survives quarter-end triage, not for all of them. The buyer-facing schedule this sits under is the mutual action plan; their markup is read by the redline review, and once it is signed, the handoff to implementation starts.
What actually decides when a contract gets signed
Electronic signature law settled the format question two decades ago. Under the federal ESIGN Act, a signature or contract may not be denied legal effect solely because it is in electronic form. The same section preserves every other requirement of law about the rights and obligations of the people signing. So the click is fine and the authority behind it is untouched, which is why the thing that moves a close date is never which tool you sent it through.
Authority runs on a number, and the number is rarely the one on the quote. Take Ardenne Freight: $96,000 a year, thirty-six months, five percent uplift in years two and three, plus $28,000 of implementation. The annual figure sits well under a VP's $250,000 ceiling. The commitment is $330,640, which is $80,640 over it, so the signature belongs to the CFO. Nothing about the deal changed. The rep was quoting one number and the buyer's policy was reading another.
That CFO signs at a monthly finance review, and the last one before quarter end falls on 10 March, three weeks ahead of the target. Work backwards at the buyer's own stated durations and the security review had to start on 26 January. It is 8 February. Federal buyers are the exception worth knowing about, since a contracting officer binds the government only to the extent of the authority delegated and those limits have to be public. Commercial buyers will tell you if asked.
How it works
Give it the numbers
The deal as priced, the term, the uplifts, and the date it has to be signed by.
River derives the signer
Total commitment against their thresholds, then every approval sitting above whoever that names.
Dates, counted backwards
Each step gets a start date from the buyer's own review durations and their signing calendar.
Work it in chat
Add what procurement tells you, or re-date the chain the morning a step slips.
What you get
- The total commitment their authority rules measure, worked out from term, uplift and one-time fees
- The threshold that number crosses, and the named person it puts the signature with
- Every approval above that signature, with the one person on each who can clear it
- A start date for each step, counted backwards in working days from the real signing slot
- The execution formality the contracting entity needs, which is not always one signature
- The steps that can run at the same time, and the ones that genuinely cannot
Common questions
Our champion says their VP can sign it.
He may be right, and it is worth testing against the number their policy measures rather than the one on your quote. Most authority matrices run on total commitment across the term, including uplifts and one-time fees. In the worked example that turns $96,000 into $330,640, which is $80,640 past the VP ceiling and lands the signature with the CFO.
The paper names their UK subsidiary. Does that change anything?
It can change how many signatures you need. For a company under the law of England and Wales, the Companies Act says a document is validly executed when two authorised signatories sign it. A lone director signature counts only when a witness attests it. One unwitnessed director on a guarantee is a re-signature and another week.
We already run a mutual action plan. How is this different?
They work together. A mutual action plan is the shared, buyer-facing schedule you agree with your champion, and it usually carries approvals as a single row. This is the derivation underneath that row: which number the threshold reads, who it names, and what date each step above the signature has to start.
What if we genuinely cannot find out who signs?
Then the plan says so and carries it as the largest open risk, with the two questions that resolve it and who to ask. A guessed signer is worse than an unknown one. A chain built on the wrong name still reads as complete, and it dates every step off a person who will never see the paper.
Does an e-signature tool speed any of this up?
It removes the courier and nothing else. Electronic signature law settled whether an electronic record counts as signed. It did not touch who is allowed to bind the company, or how often their finance committee meets. Almost all of the delay in the last two weeks sits in the approvals before the signature rather than in the signing.
Our own side has to sign too. Is that in here?
It goes in the same chain, on the same footing. Countersignature is the step teams forget to date, and it fails two ways. Your named approver is away that week, or your own threshold routes it into a desk review nobody warned the rep about. Both are cheap to check early and expensive on the last day.
The deal is already stuck. Is this still the right thing to run?
Run this while the date is still real and you want to know what stands between here and it. Once it has stopped moving and nobody can say why, the blocker brief sorts every open item by which side owes the next document, which is rarely the side the deal team assumes. The redline review reads the buyer's markup itself.
Deal Close Checklist That Names the Signer
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