Onboarding client

The six things

Accept the client on terms you have written down. Send one request for what you need, not five. Set up your own side while you wait. Confirm what happens first, in writing, with a date. Do the first piece of work early enough that they see it. Then close the onboarding explicitly, so everyone knows the client is a client rather than still arriving.

The order matters more than the content

Setting up your side while waiting for their documents is what turns a serial process into a parallel one, and it is the single change that most reliably shortens the calendar. Firms that wait for the client before doing anything internal add the client's response time to every step instead of just to one.

The one number

Onboardings in flight. Multiply the clients you start each month by the days you allow, divide by the days in a month, and you have how many are live at once. It is the number that tells you whether one person can hold it and when a checklist stops being optional. The free worksheet here computes it alongside the hours it costs.

Closing it explicitly

An onboarding that is never declared finished stays open forever, and the residue becomes the account manager's background noise: a document nobody chased, an access nobody granted, a promise nobody logged. Say it is done, list what is outstanding, and hand those items somewhere they will be seen.