Client Onboarding Process Template
Four documents and three sheets, including a tracker that prices each outstanding client document in the booked hours it is holding.
Free download · No account needed
Document Collection Tracker
[Company] — fortnight beginning [Monday]
One row per item a client still owes. The right-hand columns are the ones no downloadable onboarding checklist carries: what the item has historically taken to come back, the date it is therefore expected, and the booked hours that cannot start until it does.
| Client | Item | Asked | Median | Expected | Start | Holds | Hours blocked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Hours held behind incomplete onboarding | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Expected is the ask date plus that item’s own median in working days, measured from your completed jobs rather than taken from a generic day range. Compare it to the start date and the slot either holds with days to spare or misses by a number, which is a different sentence from “at risk”.
The last column is the join. Your checklist knows what is outstanding and your diary knows what is booked, and nothing you can download puts the two in the same row.
Every client onboarding process template for a small business is the same artifact: seven phases with an owner against each and a nominal day range beside it. Welcome, discovery, documents, access, kickoff, handoff, review. They differ mostly in whether they arrive as a Word procedure, a playbook or an automation guide. All of them describe the order things happen in, and none can answer the question an owner actually has on a Monday, which is whether the work booked for a fortnight's time will be able to start at all.
Harlow Mechanical is an invented two-crew heat pump installer with 160 crew-hours in the fortnight beginning Monday 1 June and 132 of them booked across nine installs. Four clients have returned everything, which is 54 hours. Five have not, which is 78. Expected arrival is the date each item was asked for plus that item's own median over the last thirty-six completed jobs, and on that test four of the five miss their start date, carrying 66 crew-hours between them.
All four are waiting on the same thing, and it is the slowest item on the list at eleven working days, asked for last because that is when the permit gets filed. Asked at signature instead, all four hold. Two dates here are computed rather than chosen. One is the third business day after a sale agreed at the customer's home, where Saturday counts and Sunday does not. The other is the thousand dollar ceiling that means a deposit cannot hold a slot in California.
What's in the pack
Document Collection Tracker sheet
One row per outstanding item, with the date it was asked for, that item's median and ninth decile, the expected arrival that follows, the start date it threatens and the booked hours it is blocking. The last column is the join nothing else makes.
Client Register sheet
One row per booked job: hours, contract value, signature date, scheduled start, deposit taken against its lawful ceiling, and the items still outstanding. Both dates on it are computed from a document, not chosen.
Onboarding Checklist by Service Type sheet
Every item a client supplies, what it blocks, and its measured median and ninth decile with the observation count behind them. Then the working day you currently ask for it, and the latest date you could ask and still make the start.
Intake Questionnaire
The single first message, sent on the day of signature, asking for everything at once and leading with the slowest item rather than the easiest. Each question carries the reason it is there and the thing that cannot happen without it.
Welcome Pack
What happens and when, who to call about which kind of problem, and what is needed back. The stage that fixes the final price is kept separate from the stage that fixes the start date, because clients routinely assume the deposit did both.
Expectation Note
One page on what actually moves a date, ranked by how often each cause really happens, plus the cancellation window and the deposit ceiling in plain language. The commercial terms themselves belong in the agreement.
Onboarding Procedure and eight prompts
The written method behind all of it, from measuring return times to scoring each fortnight. Where the chasing time itself goes is a separate audit.
How it works
- 1
Take the files or install the pack
Four documents and three sheets as Word and CSV files with no account, or install the whole thing into a private Space with the agent already primed on the measurement.
- 2
Send the diary and the last thirty clients
Booked work with the hours against each job, and for past clients the date you asked for each item and the date it came back. The return times are in that history and nowhere else.
- 3
Get the return times, then the register
A median and a ninth decile per item with the observation count behind them, then every booked job tested against its own slowest outstanding item rather than against a generic day range.
- 4
Read the hours, then make three calls
Which items are holding the most booked hours, what the counterfactual does to the failing slots, and the morning chase list sorted by hours protected rather than by how long each client has been waiting.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Four documents, three sheets and eight prompts with no signup and no card, and they are the same files the agent works in. Editing with AI is the optional path, where your own job history becomes the return times and the register gets built on them.
What format are the downloaded files?
CSV for the Client Register, the Document Collection Tracker and the Onboarding Checklist, and Word for the four documents, zipped together. Excel, Numbers, Sheets, Word and Pages open them directly with nothing to install and nothing to convert.
Why measure in hours rather than in days late?
Because days late does not say what it costs. Two clients can owe the same document and be worth 24 crew-hours and 8, and the register says which one gets the first call. What one of those hours is actually worth is a separate build. On the worked example 66 of 160 crew-hours sit behind a single outstanding item.
What if I have never recorded when I asked for things?
Start the measurement now and run the register on provisional return times in the meantime, marked as provisional on the row. Five completed jobs per item is enough to stop guessing, and the checklist carries the observation count so a thin figure admits it.
My constraint is not crew-hours. Does this still work?
Yes, and the unit is the first thing to set. Chair-hours for a clinic, van-days where the van is scarcer than the fitter, billable hours for a professional firm. One unit, named on the sheet, used everywhere. Whether that unit earns anything is a separate question.
Is the cancellation window on the register legal advice?
No. It is arithmetic on a signature date under a federal rule, cited on the sheet so you can read it yourself, and several states run their own alongside it. Whether either reaches a particular contract is a question for your lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice.
Does this replace my scheduling software?
No. It reads what the diary already holds and adds the thing no scheduler carries, which is how long each client-supplied item has historically taken to come back. When the deposit lands is a cash question rather than a scheduling one.
Find out which booked hours your onboarding is quietly holding
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open it in River, send the diary and the last thirty clients, and get the return times back first.
Edit with AI