Home › Services › IT Due Diligence
IT Due Diligence for Business Buyers
The accountant checks the books and the lawyer checks the contracts - but nobody has looked at the systems the whole business runs on. Before you sign, find out what the technology is actually worth, what it hides, and what the first 90 days will cost.
The Blind Spot in Most Business Purchases
Small-business sales get financial and legal due diligence as a matter of course. The IT - the actual machinery the revenue runs through - is usually taken on faith. Then settlement happens, and the buyer discovers the "systems included in sale" are a ten-year-old server out of warranty, software licensed to the previous owner personally, customer data scattered across three ex-employees' accounts, and one irreplaceable person who knows all the passwords and is not staying.
Every one of those is findable in advance, and most are negotiable once found - as price adjustments, settlement conditions, or handover requirements written into the contract while you still have leverage. After settlement, they are simply your problems, at your cost.
We do this as a fixed-scope review alongside your accountant and lawyer, and report in plain English: what is there, what it is worth, what it risks, and what the first 90 days of ownership will actually cost. Sellers use the same review in reverse - tidying the IT story before sale, so it survives a buyer's scrutiny.
What the Review Examines
Fixed-scope, sized to the deal - findings in writing.
What the business actually runs on
- Hardware age, warranty status and honest replacement timeline
- Software and licensing - what transfers, what is tied to the seller, what is unlicensed
- Websites, domains and email: who really controls them today
What could hurt after settlement
- Security posture: MFA, backups, and whether either has ever been tested
- Data: where customer records live and whether they can legally come along
- Key-person risk - the systems only one departing human understands
The first 90 days, priced
- The must-fix list with real numbers attached
- Deferred spending the seller left for you - end-of-life kit, expiring subscriptions
- What the ongoing IT run-rate should look like under your ownership
Findings you can negotiate with
- Issues framed as contract conditions, price adjustments or handover requirements
- Access and credential handover checklist for settlement day
- A day-one transition plan so trading does not hiccup at changeover
Due Diligence Questions, Answered
What buyers and their advisors ask.
When in the purchase process should IT due diligence happen?
Alongside financial due diligence - after serious intent, before anything is signed that limits your ability to negotiate. Findings only have value while they can still become contract conditions or price adjustments. A review after settlement is just an expensive way to learn what you already own.
What does IT due diligence cost?
Fixed-scope, sized to the deal - a five-person business with cloud everything is a much smaller review than one with servers, custom software and thirty staff. Quoted up front after a short scoping call, and deliberately small next to what one missed licensing or data problem costs after settlement.
What problems does it actually find?
The recurring catalogue: software licensed personally to the seller and not transferable, hardware at or past end of life priced as an asset, customer data that cannot legally transfer the way the seller assumes, domains and websites registered to someone who left years ago, no working backups, and a single irreplaceable person holding every password. Most deals surface at least two.
We are selling - is this useful from our side?
Very. A seller-side review finds the same issues before the buyer\u2019s advisors do, while there is time to fix them quietly - transferring licences properly, documenting systems, cleaning up access. A tidy IT story removes a whole category of price-chipping at the negotiation table.
Does this replace advice from our accountant or lawyer?
No - it feeds them. We cover the technical layer they cannot see into: what the systems are, what they are worth, and what risks they carry. Your lawyer turns those findings into contract terms and your accountant prices them into the deal. We are happy working directly with both.
Related Services
The pieces that usually sit alongside this work.
Looking at a business right now?
Send what you can share. We will scope the review this week - due diligence has a deal clock on it, and we treat it that way.
Support Perth IT Pty Ltd · Perth, Western Australia · $180/hr ex GST, one-hour minimum, then 30-minute increments · No call-out fee in metro Perth.