Client onboarding process: a checklist for agencies and dev shops

The first two weeks of an engagement teach the client how to treat you. If you start before the deposit arrives, they learn that payment dates are flexible. If four different people send you requests and you act on all of them, they learn that anyone can direct your team. If you answer a message at 10pm, they learn that 10pm is available. None of this is said out loud. All of it becomes the standing arrangement.

A written client onboarding process fixes those terms deliberately. It also removes a category of small errors that damage trust early: the developer who cannot get into the repository for nine days, the invoice sent to the wrong person, the kickoff where nobody on the client side has read the scope.

Below is the checklist I use, followed by notes on each phase. It is one of the documents in the Clients hub, and it assumes you have already done the work described in how to get clients.

Phase 1: before signature

Onboarding starts before the contract is signed, because this is the last point at which saying no is free.

Confirm the three facts. Budget, decision-maker, deadline. If the person you are talking to cannot name the budget or needs someone else to approve it, you are talking to an evaluator. Ask to meet the approver before you send paper.

Send the paper as a set. The master services agreement, the statement of work and the deposit invoice go in one email. Sending them together signals that all three are conditions of starting. An email that works:

Attached are the three things we need to begin: the master agreement, the statement of work for phase one, and the deposit invoice for $18,000, which is 30 percent of the phase one fee.

We have provisionally held the team from Monday the 14th. That date is confirmed once the agreement is signed and the deposit has arrived. If either is going to take longer on your side, tell me and I will move the start date to match.

Note the last sentence. It makes the start date depend on their actions without sounding like a threat.

Watch how they handle it. A client who signs in three days and pays in five is showing you the next twelve months. So is a client whose legal team takes five weeks and whose accounts department has “a process”. Neither is disqualifying. The second one needs longer payment follow-up built into your planning and possibly a larger deposit.

On deposit size: 25 to 50 percent of the first phase for project work, or the first month in advance for a retainer. A $60,000 project with a 30 percent deposit puts $18,000 in your account before anyone opens a laptop. If the client later goes quiet on an invoice, that buffer is what lets you handle it calmly. The article on what to do when a client is not paying explains why this clause matters more than any other.

Phase 2: day 0, the day the contract is signed

Three things happen the day the countersigned contract and the deposit are both in hand.

The welcome email. Short and specific:

Welcome aboard. Here is what happens next.

Your team: [NAME] leads the project and is your day-to-day contact. [NAME] is the technical lead. I stay involved as the escalation point.

Kickoff: Tuesday at 10:00, 60 minutes. Agenda attached.

What we need from you before Tuesday: the access list attached, and the name of the one person who approves deliverables.

How we communicate: a written update every Friday, a 30-minute call every second Tuesday, and the shared channel for day-to-day questions. We answer within one working day.

First deliverable: the technical audit summary, Friday the 25th.

The access request. Send one complete list, with the access level you need for each system and the name of the person on your side who needs it. Clients forgive one long list. They resent a new request every other day. The access table in the checklist doubles as your offboarding list: when the engagement ends, you hand back or revoke everything on it.

The internal handoff. Whoever sold the work briefs whoever delivers it. Thirty minutes covering what was promised, what the client is nervous about, and anything said in the sales process that is not in the statement of work. Most early disappointments trace back to a promise made on a sales call that the delivery team never heard about.

Phase 3: week one

Run the kickoff. The meeting has one job: everyone leaves with the same understanding of scope, roles and rhythm. Read the out-of-scope list aloud. Explain how changes are handled, so that the first change request in week five is already a familiar procedure. The full running order is in the project kickoff agenda.

Name the single approver. One person on the client side can accept deliverables and approve changes. Others can comment. Write the name in the kickoff notes. This one line prevents the committee problem described in the article on difficult clients, where five people give conflicting feedback and nobody can say yes.

Confirm the invoice path. Ask who receives invoices, whether a purchase order number is required, what the payment run dates are, and whether you need to register as a vendor. A surprising number of late payments come from an invoice sent to the project sponsor that never reached accounts payable.

Ship something small. By the end of week one the client should have received a tangible thing: a working staging environment, an audit summary, a first wireframe. The client has just spent a significant sum on a promise. An early result, however modest, tells them the decision was sound.

Phase 4: the first 30 days

Keep the rhythm without exception. The Friday update goes out every Friday, including the weeks with little to report. A client who knows when they will hear from you does not send “just checking in” messages on Wednesday. A simple format: done this week, planned next week, waiting on you, risks.

Send the first regular invoice on the agreed date. Then watch what happens. If it is paid on time, good. If it is five days late, mention it in a friendly way now. The first late payment sets the pattern, and it is far easier to correct in month one than in month six.

Hold the 30-day check-in. A 30-minute call between the owner or account lead and the client’s decision-maker, without the delivery team. Three questions:

What has gone better than you expected? What has been more work for you than you expected? Is there anything you would like us to do differently from here?

Then give your own feedback: approvals that took too long, access still missing, requests arriving from people outside the agreed channel. Raising small things at day 30 is normal. Raising them for the first time at day 120 is a confrontation.

Decide whether the fit is real. By day 30 you know whether this client pays on time, respects the approver rule and keeps to the scope. If two of the three are already going wrong, address it directly now. Occasionally the right answer is to finish the current phase and stop, and the article on how to fire a client covers how to do that properly.

Adapting the checklist

For a retainer, replace the kickoff deliverable with the first monthly plan and add an item for agreeing how unused hours are treated. For a small fixed-price job under $10,000, phases 1 and 2 collapse into a single day, and the 30-day check-in becomes a closing call. For a large enterprise client, add vendor registration, security questionnaires and insurance certificates to phase 1, and expect that phase alone to take three to six weeks.

Keep the completed checklist in the client folder. When a new team member joins the account in month eight, it tells them who approves, who pays and what access exists. The other working documents on this site are collected on the templates page.