Process

What should a data room index template actually contain

The folder structure most advisers reuse across sale, fundraise and audit processes, laid out so it can be copied directly.

Vault Index desk / 12 August 2026 / 7 min read

The short answer

A standard data room index is a numbered folder tree with roughly ten top level categories that stays largely the same across a company sale, a fundraise or an audit, with the detail inside each folder adjusted to the process. Reusing a known structure rather than inventing one from scratch saves time and, more importantly, means reviewers who have seen dozens of these can find what they need without guidance.

The template below is the structure most commonly seen in adviser led processes and is a reasonable starting point for any mid sized transaction.

The top level structure

1) Corporate and governance: incorporation documents, share register, board minutes, shareholder agreements. 2) Financial statements and models: audited accounts, management accounts, the operating model, budget versus actual reporting. 3) Commercial contracts: customer contracts, supplier agreements, partnership and distribution agreements. 4) Intellectual property: patents, trademarks, registered domains, licensing agreements, open source usage records. 5) Employment and HR: employment contracts, share option schemes, org charts, pension arrangements.

6) Litigation and compliance: active and historic litigation, regulatory correspondence, licences and permits. 7) Real estate and assets: property leases, fixed asset registers, equipment schedules. 8) Tax: tax returns, transfer pricing documentation, correspondence with tax authorities. 9) Insurance: policy schedules, claims history. 10) Q&A and correspondence: the platform's built in question and answer log, kept separate from the substantive documents so it does not clutter the index.

Adjusting the template by process type

For a fundraise, add a dedicated data room folder for the cap table, prior funding round documents and investor updates, and trim litigation and real estate folders to a placeholder if there is genuinely nothing material to disclose there. For an audit, expand the financial statements folder into monthly detail and add a controls documentation folder that would otherwise sit under governance.

For a real estate portfolio sale, real estate and assets becomes the largest folder by volume and is usually itself broken down property by property, with commercial contracts and litigation trimmed to what is directly relevant to the properties in scope rather than the wider business.

Numbering and naming conventions that hold up under scrutiny

Number folders and files with a consistent scheme, for example 3.2.4 for the fourth document in the second sub folder of section three, so that any adviser can cite a document unambiguously in a disclosure letter or diligence report months after the room closes. File names should include the index number, a short description and a date, rather than relying on the platform's internal file ID, because index numbers survive being copied into Word documents and emails in a way that platform generated links do not.

Keep a version control note in the file name or a covering log wherever a document has been updated during the process, since buyers and auditors frequently ask which version of a contract or financial statement they are looking at, and an ambiguous answer undermines confidence in the whole room.

Closing note

This structure is a starting point rather than a fixed standard, and most of the platforms compared on this site, including Ansarada and Drooms, ship their own built in index templates for specific deal types. See the full ranking at /rankings, the method behind it at /methodology, and current pricing at /pricing.

Sources and further reading

Vendor figures rechecked 1 September 2026