Changelog

Deals now come in through one front door: drop a folder of CIMs or forward broker emails to your workspace's own address, and each one is screened against your buy box. Every deal gets a six-tab page with a memo that cites its figures, underwriting for SBA and funded search, and offers built from your numbers. Features that sat outside the path from CIM to close are gone, so the deal work comes first.

Screening

• Drop a folder of CIMs to screen them. Use Drop CIMs in the sidebar, or drag files or folders onto Deals. Each is matched to your deals and screened against your buy box as Pursue, Ask first or Pass, with reasons and source pages. If a tab closes mid-upload, choose the file again.
• Forward deals to your own address, which replaces the Deal Inbox. An admin creates it in Settings › Forwarding address. CIMs, teasers, listing links and the email's text are screened like a drop, and mail from outside your team waits for an admin. Deals from the Inbox keep their history, and old Inbox links open Screening.
• Triage new deals in Deals › Screening. Files fill in as they're read, with the fit, red flags and AI cost, and a deal opens beside its PDF with the quotes highlighted. Work by keyboard, pass every suggested deal at once, draft notes to brokers and get one notification per finished batch.
• Search, compare and screen your backlog. Search Screening by company, industry or location, filter by verdict or required criteria, and compare up to four deals, each figure with its period and source page. Screen my open deals runs the screen over deals you already had, after a cost estimate.
• Weight your criteria and mark the must-haves. In Settings › Buy box & screening, weight each criterion, mark the required ones and set an EBITDA range, reported or seller-adjusted. Deals that meet them rank first, one that misses is suggested for a pass, and Refresh fit updates fits with no new AI cost.

Today

• Today helps you get started, and the News Digest is retired. Today's Get started card asks an admin to create your forwarding address, and Today shows CIM batches still running and files that need you. The News Digest, follow-up rules and check-ins are gone; Today still flags engaged deals nobody has touched in 14 days.

The deal page

• Six tabs for every deal. Overview, Memo, Underwriting, Documents, Diligence and Activity, with notes, comments, emails and meetings in one Activity timeline. Asking price, revenue, SDE and EBITDA show their source (a document's page, a person's edit or the CIM's first read), and old links still open the right place.
• A Deal Memo tied to your documents. Every number points to a figure your documents state or to your underwriting, and when documents disagree the memo suggests the question to ask. It refreshes when the deal changes, and the Memo tab's screen and LOI levers replace Score Deal, Strategy and Negotiate.

Underwriting

• Underwrite SBA and funded-search deals. On the Underwriting tab, model a deal as an SBA-financed self-funded search, with or without investors, or a traditional funded search: sources and uses, debt, coverage, returns, sensitivity and the price that meets your target. Save scenarios, compare them and pick the one that leads.
• Your max price on every deal card. Deal cards, Screening and the deal header show your maximum price at your coverage target (SBA) or the value at your target multiple (funded search), with the gap to the ask. SBA figures are marked pending lender review until a lender confirms the built-in rules.

Offers

• Turn a scenario into an IOI or LOI. SBA offers are checked against SBA rules (no earnout, a seller note sized to fit) and blocked if they'd fail. The letter is filled from the offer's terms, and accepting an LOI offers to move the deal to Under LOI and launch the data room.
• Exclusivity countdown and offer analytics. An accepted LOI counts down its exclusivity on the deal, its card and Today. Analytics › Offers shows LOIs sent and signed, your win rate and how long it takes to get from CIM to LOI.

Legal

• NDAs from the deal, on your letterhead. On Pro and above, generate an NDA from the deal, prefilled from your firm and the seller, from your default template or a starter draft for counsel to review. NDAs and offer letters are Word files with your firm's name, address and logo.
• Legal now lives on the deal. Legal leaves the sidebar: its tracker is the Deals list's Legal filter, and Confirm execution in a deal's Diligence › Legal records the signing date and the signed copy. Follow-up and expiry dates show on Today, and offers fill their own letter instead of LOI templates.

Documents and uploads

• Documents are read page by page. Scanned and table-heavy PDF pages are read by AI, so their figures reach Ask about this deal and memos. PowerPoint decks are read too, spreadsheets sheet by sheet and Word files at their page breaks, including files you'd already uploaded.

Data room

• Send document requests in one step. The memo's missing-document requests go to the data room, a collection link or your to-dos, and counterparties never see your figures in a request's title. Open diligence checklist items become the deal's to-dos, and your diligence templates create one data room workstream per category.

Meetings

• Connect Granola, and deal meetings come to you. On Pro and above, connect Granola in Settings › Connected accounts: meetings about deals arrive linked to the right deal for you to confirm, and new people become suggested contacts. It replaces MeetGeek imports and the Gmail "Meeting Notes" label; meetings you imported stay.
• Recorded meetings stay private until you share them. Confirming a meeting's deal shares it with the deal team, and "Share with everyone" with the whole workspace. Meetings you never shared are removed 30 days after you disconnect, and Ask about this deal keeps answers drawn from a deal-team meeting to whoever asked.
• Calendar meetings land on the right deal. Google Calendar import keeps only deal meetings, never copies descriptions, and links a meeting when exactly one open deal matches its attendees. Older recaps now show on their deal, Meetings has instant search, and the Assistant can search the meetings you can see.

Expenses

• Expenses is a module, with bank and card feeds rolling out. Workspaces that used Expenses keep it, and on Pro and above admins can turn it on in Settings › General. Bank and card feeds that file your charges, match receipts and send what needs you to your Expenses Inbox are opening to workspaces gradually.
• Conferences, the Slack bot and the mileage tab are retired. The conference catalog is gone, and expenses you linked to a conference are grouped as a trip named after it, in the list and the CSV export. Expenses and receipts sent through the Slack bot stay, ready to edit, approve and export.

Assistant

• The Assistant focuses on drafting, replying and scheduling. The email assistant that labelled, archived and drafted replies in your inbox is gone, with its daily digest. The Assistant still searches and reads your email, drafts replies and forwards for you to review, and works with your calendar and contacts.

AI

• Smarter use of your own API keys. On your own keys, quick steps like reading scanned pages and naming chats run on your provider's fast model, and testing a key tries every model it serves. A second provider cross-checks CIM figures only if an admin turns it on in Settings › Keys & providers.

Settings

• Google sign-in asks only who you are. Signing in asks Google only for your name and email address, not for Drive access. Connect Gmail and Google Calendar separately, in Settings › Connected accounts or where a feature needs them; existing connections keep working, and you're asked to reconnect if Google stops honouring one.
• Your AI usage, and what each plan includes. Settings › Billing & AI usage shows how much of your plan's built-in AI you've used this month, and warns owners and admins at 80%. Your own keys are never metered. Pro and above add meeting recorders, NDAs and offer letters, and Expenses.

Speed

• Faster meetings, contacts and pickers. Meeting lists show a short preview and load the full notes when you open one, Contacts loads a page at a time, and the pickers for contacts, deals and portfolio companies search as you type.

Security and reliability

• Security and privacy hardening. Your stored API keys are encrypted with a key of their own, and we tightened how requests are checked across the app. There's nothing you need to do.

SearchWare's AI moves to current models and has room to finish long answers. Add to Calendar now shares only a meeting's title and time, and AI features that create content need Member access.

Deals

• You're told when a CIM can't be read. If SearchWare can't read a CIM you add, you see an error instead of an empty "Unknown" deal.

Meetings

• Add to Calendar shares only the title and time. Notes and summaries stay in SearchWare, contacts are invited only when you tick "Invite attendees", and the dialog shows exactly who Google will email. When the Assistant creates an event, you can see, edit or clear the description attendees get.

AI

• Current AI models. SearchWare's built-in AI runs on Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash. New API keys default to Claude Sonnet 5, GPT-5.6 Sol or Gemini 3.8 Flash, with Claude Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 on offer.
• Long answers have room to finish. Memos and chats are no longer cut short. If an answer still runs out of room, you see an error instead of a half-finished reply.
• No more temperature slider. Current Claude models don't accept a custom temperature, so SearchWare no longer sends one and the slider is gone from Settings › Assistant.
• Your keys, your providers. If your firm uses its own API keys, your documents go only to the AI providers you hold keys for. With a key for just one provider, CIMs are read by that provider alone.
• AI that creates content needs Member access. Memos, Ask about this deal, legal reviews, the Assistant and the other AI features that create content need Member access or higher. Viewers keep their read-only access.

SearchWare now works properly on phones and touch tablets, and your dashboard becomes Today: one page of what needs you across your deals. You can also record why you pass on a deal and where each deal came from, then see both in Analytics.

Today

• Your dashboard is now Today. It's one page of what needs you across your deals: meetings, to-dos due, overdue data room requests, deals waiting on a CIM and deals that have gone quiet. Each part loads on its own, and Members tick off to-dos right there.
• A clear start for a new workspace. A workspace with no deals gets a Get started card on Today, and the pipeline shows one "Build your pipeline" prompt instead of empty columns.

Deals

• Record why you pass, and when to look again. Passing on or archiving a deal asks for a reason, such as valuation gap, customer concentration or seller not ready, with an optional note and revisit date. Edit it from the deal page; the List view shows "Revisit due" once the date arrives.
• Track where each deal came from. Each deal can record its source (broker, listing site, proprietary outreach, referral, intermediary network, inbound or other) and the contact behind it. Set it in Add deal or, as a Member, on the deal page; deals created from a CIM record their broker.
• "Gone quiet" means no real activity. A deal's last activity counts real work (comments, emails, meetings, documents, to-dos, stage moves and data room exchanges), not field edits. The board marks an engaged deal with no activity for 14 days and says how long it's been quiet.

Data room

• Your firm's brand in the data room. Counterparties see your firm's logo (or initials) and name across the data room, its sign-in pages and its emails, with "Secure data room · Powered by SearchWare". Admins upload a PNG, JPEG or WebP logo of up to 1 MB in Settings › General.
• Links that land on the request. Request emails, reminders and upload notifications open the request itself and highlight it, deadline warnings name the day ("Due Mon, Oct 5"), and Friday's reminders cover requests due over the weekend or on Monday.
• A faster data room. Messages opens with recent messages already loaded and shows yours as soon as you send it, and the dashboard and workstreams load faster.
• Search and sort documents, and invite in bulk. Counterparties can search data room documents by name or folder, sort them by name or recently added, and see New on files added since their last visit. Inviting several addresses at once skips duplicates, and admins can change a counterparty member's role.
• Request files follow the Financial documents switch. A file uploaded to a document request counts as a financial document when the request or the file is financial, so turning off Financial documents hides it too.

Meetings

• Clearer dates on meetings and to-dos. Upcoming meetings say how far ahead they are, such as "Tomorrow", instead of a negative "ago", completed to-dos say when they were done instead of showing as overdue, and times show in your local time.

Analytics

• See why you pass and where deals come from. Analytics › Overview adds Why we pass, which counts your passed and archived deals by reason, and Deals by source, which shows how far each source's deals got: reached NDA, reached LOI or closed won.

Phones and tablets

• SearchWare works on phones and tablets. Every signed-in page fits a phone without sideways scrolling, dialogs fit with their buttons in reach, and wide tables become cards. Text fields no longer make iOS zoom in, and buttons, menus, checkboxes and switches are finger-sized on any touch screen.
• The pipeline and deal page on a phone. The pipeline shows one stage at a time with stage chips to jump between them, and the deal page has a compact header with tabs that stay in reach.
• Return adds a new line on touch keyboards. In Ask about this deal, Ask about this company, the Assistant and data room Messages, Return starts a new line on phones and tablets, and you tap send to send. On a computer, Enter still sends.
• The data room on a phone. Data room pages fit a phone, Messages keeps its message box above the tab bar, and admins reach Users, Activity log and Settings from the account button. The sign-in code fits the screen, with a countdown before you can resend it.
• Sign-in, invitation and document collection pages fit a phone. They also share the SearchWare name and mark.

Speed

• Fewer reloads and a quicker Back. Saving on Portfolio, Expenses and many other pages updates the page once instead of twice, and going back to a page you just left is instant.

Security and reliability

• Clear messages when a service is slow or you're signed out. If Gmail or another connected service doesn't answer in time, you're told so instead of watching a spinner, and a Gmail send that times out asks you to check Sent before retrying. If your session has ended, actions ask you to sign in again.
• Security and privacy hardening. We tightened access checks and privacy protections across the app. There's nothing you need to do.

Fixes

• Comments with @mentions and links post again. Deal comments and replies that @mention a teammate, or include a link or a numbered list, no longer fail to post.
• Smaller fixes. Generated NDAs put your firm's address on one line, editing a portfolio company keeps its state of incorporation, clearing filters on Contacts resets all of them, deleting an Assistant chat asks first, and notifications and activity say "Under LOI" rather than "UNDER LOI".
• Menus and links. Select menus are as tall as the screen allows, so the stage menu shows every option on a phone, web addresses in data room messages open in a new tab, and a dismissed data room welcome note stays dismissed in that browser.

The data room becomes a two-way workspace: ask counterparties for documents, review what they upload, and decide file by file what they see. The pipeline and deal page also respond the moment you click, and bulk email fills in each recipient's details.

Deals

• A faster pipeline with instant stage moves. The pipeline loads faster, and cards show the ask, earnings, multiple and days in stage. Stage moves take effect on click, snap back with an error if they can't be saved, and offer to launch the data room when a deal reaches Under LOI.

The deal page

• Launch a data room from the deal. A deal in Mgmt meeting, Under LOI or Due diligence can launch its data room right from the deal page, and a double click never launches two.
• Deal tabs you can link to. Links from Notifications and search open the right tab of a deal, refreshing keeps your tab, and comment and to-do notifications open where the comment or to-do is.
• Comments keep your text. A comment or reply stays in the editor until it's saved, and the editor locks while saving so nothing you type is lost. Pinning a comment is instant.
• A faster deal page and email search. The deal page no longer loads every email up front; an email's body loads when you open it. Email search shows matches as it goes, with "Searching all emails…" while the full search runs, instead of wrongly saying nothing matches.

Documents and uploads

• Upload many files at once, with progress and Retry. Uploads to a deal's Documents go four at a time, each file with its progress or the reason it failed, and Retry. Files over 100 MB or of an unsupported type are named and skipped, and PowerPoint and WebP files can be picked.

Data room

• Deal documents are private until you share them. Counterparties see a deal document only once you share it from the deal's Documents tab, one file or a selection at a time. Unshared files are marked "Team only", and files counterparties upload to a request are shared automatically.
• What counterparties see follows what you share. Counterparty activity views and exports leave out documents they can't see, and a file replaced through a document collection link stays private until your team shares it.
• Request documents from counterparties. Data room admins add document requests to a workstream, with details, an optional due date and a counterparty assignee, who gets an email and sees the request on their data room dashboard. Viewers are never asked to upload.
• Review what they upload. Counterparties upload a file, or replace it until it's approved. It's saved to the deal's documents in a folder for its workstream, your team is notified, and data room admins approve it or send it back.
• Reminders when requests are due. Assignees get a reminder the day before a request is due, then one every three days while it's overdue, for up to 30 days, as long as the deal is open and they still have access.
• Document downloads and Financial documents switches. In the data room's Settings, turning off Document downloads lets invited members and viewers only view PDFs and images, and turning off Financial documents hides statements, tax returns, QoE reports and Financial or Tax folders from them. Your team and data room admins aren't limited.
• Notifications for data room messages. When a counterparty writes in the data room's Messages, your deal team gets one notification per burst. Counterparties get an email when someone else writes (at most one until they read it, never with the message text) and choose which data room emails they get.
• Manage milestones and workstreams. Data room admins complete, reopen, edit or delete milestones, edit or delete workstreams, and are the only ones who change a workstream's status. Deleting a workstream that has uploads asks first and keeps the files with the deal. Data room access is by invitation only.
• Files counterparties send are read automatically. Files that arrive through a data room request or a document collection link are read for AI without anyone clicking a button, so they're ready for memos and underwriting.

Meetings

• Calendar import is your choice. Each person turns on Google Calendar import with a calendar they pick in Settings › Connected accounts, and the setting says up front that imported meetings are visible to everyone in your workspace.

Contacts

• Personalised bulk email. Bulk email through Gmail fills in each recipient's first name, last name, full name and company, and names any unknown or misspelled merge field before anything is sent. Create Gmail draft puts everyone in Bcc, so it's off while you use merge fields.
• Email templates when you email contacts. The Email contacts dialog has a Use template menu that lists the merge fields you can use, and saving an email template in Settings › Templates checks its length and merge fields.

To-dos

• Instant check-offs. Ticking a to-do or sub-task, or changing its assignee or due date, takes effect on click and reverts with an error if it can't be saved. A to-do that fails to save keeps its dialog open with what you typed.
• Add a task template to a deal. A deal's to-dos have From template, which adds one of your workspace's task templates from Settings › Templates as a new list after your existing ones, in the template's order.

Expenses

• Export expenses, with more filters. On Pro and above, an Export menu downloads the filtered list as a CSV that opens cleanly in Excel, or a printable report you can save as PDF, covering every match. Filters add an entity and a date range, and searching 42 finds exactly $42.00.

Settings

• Your buy box is editable in Settings. Admins edit the workspace's search criteria in Settings › Buy box & screening, and ranges are checked: a minimum can't exceed its maximum, and dollar amounts can't be negative.

Design

• More readable and accessible screens. Text, buttons, field borders and focus rings meet WCAG AA contrast, keyboard focus is always visible, AI answers and comments show their formatting, tall dialogs fit the screen, and every page has its own browser tab title (a deal's shows the company name).

Security and reliability

• Try again really retries, and not-found pages stay in the app. Try again on an error page reloads the data instead of showing the same error. Broken or old links show a not-found page inside the app, and data room error and not-found pages keep the data room's look.
• Security and privacy hardening. We tightened access checks and privacy protections across the app. There's nothing you need to do.

This update makes it clear who can change what in your workspace, and makes errors explain themselves. Viewers stay read-only, workspace-wide settings belong to Admins, and screens that used to fail with a blank or generic message now say what happened and what to try.

Deals

• Amounts that can't be negative are checked. A deal's asking price and revenue, and a portfolio company's revenue, purchase price, salaries, investor and cap-table amounts and valuations, can't be negative, while earnings such as SDE, EBITDA and net income still can. Other dollar figures are checked for sensible bounds.

Documents and uploads

• Spreadsheets and Word files are read more reliably. Excel (.xlsx) and CSV files are read with numbers shown the way Excel shows them, an oversized workbook gets a clear message instead of an empty result, and text from Word (.docx) files keeps its words and paragraphs intact.
• Older spreadsheet formats are stored, not read. Legacy .xls and .ods files are still saved with the deal. Save them as .xlsx or CSV for SearchWare to read them.

Data room

• Two-step sign-up with an emailed code. Counterparties you invite set up their data room account in two steps and confirm it with a single-use code sent to their email, with a short wait before they can ask for a new one.
• Data room roles follow workspace roles. A Viewer in your workspace is always a Viewer in the data room, data room Viewers are read-only, including in Messages, and workstream and milestone owners are always members of your workspace.

Contacts

• Bulk email goes from your own Gmail. Emailing contacts in bulk sends from your connected Gmail account once you confirm, so it needs a Google connection. Reaching Gmail's sending limit shows a clear message.
• Contact imports keep your cells as written. Importing contacts from a spreadsheet keeps each cell's text exactly as it appears instead of reformatting numbers and dates, and CSV and TSV files saved as UTF-8, UTF-16 or Windows-1252 are read correctly.

Settings

• Viewers are read-only, and workspace settings need an Admin. Viewers can see deals, contacts, to-dos and expenses but can't change them. Workspace-wide settings, such as your firm's details, folder templates, AI keys and billing, need the Admin role.
• Joining another workspace leaves your old one's data in place. If you're the last member of a workspace and accept an invitation to another, the old workspace keeps its deals, contacts and expenses, though you lose access to them. The invitation page says so before you accept.

Speed

• A faster dashboard, Analytics, Settings and lists. The dashboard, Analytics and Settings load in fewer steps, contact and deal lists load only what they show, the pipeline opens faster, and calendar sync skips meetings that haven't changed.

Security and reliability

• Errors that say what went wrong. Screens that showed a blank or generic failure now say what happened and what to try, including refusals you can act on, such as an expense approval rule. If an AI provider fails mid-answer, you see the error instead of an empty reply.
• Reference IDs, and switches that say when they didn't save. Error pages show a reference ID you can quote to support, and a notification switch that fails to save flips back and tells you.
• Calendar sync and data room reminders run on schedule. If you import a Google Calendar, it keeps syncing in the background, and data room reminders go out on their schedule.
• Security and privacy hardening. We tightened access checks, sign-in and privacy protections across the app, and applied security updates to the software SearchWare is built on. There's nothing you need to do.

Fixes

• Checkout, data room to-dos and portfolio setup. Checkout works when you subscribe to a plan for the first time, to-dos completed in the data room count as done, and the portfolio setup wizard no longer creates duplicates.