Onboarding contractors

The sequence, from the operations desk

Agreement signed. Identity and tax details collected, which for a US contractor means Form W-9. Payment details recorded. Access requested. Start date confirmed with a named contact on your side. First work done. First invoice received, checked against the agreed rate and basis, and paid. Seven steps, each with an owner, and the whole thing is a checklist rather than a project.

Delay one: access

Access requests leave the onboarding conversation and enter somebody else's queue, usually somebody who has no idea a contractor is waiting. This is the single most common reason a contractor with complete paperwork cannot begin, and the fix is to raise them on day zero in parallel with everything else rather than once the paperwork is finished.

Delay two: the invoicing mismatch

The first invoice arrives in a format nobody agreed, for a rate expressed differently from the agreement, and sits unpaid while two people work out whether it is right. Agreeing the invoice format and the rate basis in writing during onboarding costs five minutes and removes a fortnight of politeness later.

What to record and why

What you collected, when, and from whom. Not because a checklist proves anything about your obligations, but because the operational question, has this contractor been onboarded, needs an answer that is not somebody's recollection.