Before the destination operation commits to a date. Corporate cleanup and a broken qualifying year both take months, and neither can be accelerated once discovered.
The schedule belongs to the slowest defect
The realistic timeline depends entirely on what the early questions reveal. Clean ownership documents and an unbroken payroll year mean the preparation is short. An informal structure means corporate work that has to be done properly and documented, and a gap in the qualifying year means waiting on a corrected employment arrangement, which no amount of urgency shortens.
Where the destination operation is new, securing premises and demonstrating the capacity to support the role runs in parallel with its own lead time, and the initial approval period for a new operation is short enough that the first year's plan has to be genuinely achievable. Ask the questions before a customer or a mill is promised a date. Hypothetical example: a specialty scaffolding firm needs its general manager at an affiliated operation before a major shutdown season.
The first review should produce a timeline that starts with ownership evidence and payroll continuity, then places premises, staffing, and customer commitments on the critical path. Corporate records and payroll settle eligibility; a signed lease and operating budget settle whether the destination can support the role. Work backwards from the desired deployment but leave room for revisions to incomplete records.
A frequent mistake is treating the customer’s shutdown date as proof that the transfer can happen. Commercial urgency cannot shorten a missing qualifying year or make a new operation viable, so the schedule must respond to evidence rather than the sales calendar.