Client onboarding checklist: forms, contracts and kickoff

A client onboarding checklist has five steps, each with one document: an intake form the client fills in before the first call, a written agreement that fixes the scope and the price, signatures from everyone who has to sign, a kickoff meeting that works from the client’s own answers, and a first invoice that carries everything the client’s accounts team needs to pay it. Do them in that order. Every step borrows something from the one before it, so a missing brief shows up as a vague agreement, and a vague agreement shows up as an argument about the first invoice.

The rest of this article walks through each step with a finished example, then lists the common mistakes. The table at the end puts the whole sequence on one page with the owner of each document.

Step 1: the intake form comes before the call

The first call is expensive. If it is spent collecting the client’s business name, their current website and their budget, it is spent on a form. The Fable Studio website brief moves that collection before the call. Its intro says so plainly: fill this in first, and the call is then about the answers, not about collecting them. It takes about fifteen minutes and asks around twenty questions in three steps.

Three choices in that brief are worth copying for any service business.

It asks for decisions, not descriptions. Goals are a table where the client ranks the top three things a visitor should do, and the pages and features are checklists. A ranked table settles arguments later, because the client made the call on row one.

It asks the two questions that change the price. Who writes the content has three answers, from “We have it ready” to “We need it written”, and the budget is a band with a “Not sure yet” option. Both are honest escape hatches that still give you something to price.

It asks who signs off. “Who signs off on the design?” is a required short answer. That name decides who must be at the kickoff and who must see every milestone.

If the form collects personal information and your business is covered by the Privacy Act, APP 5 applies. The OAIC guidance says the notice should be given at or before the time of collection, and it should cover who you are, why you collect the information, and what happens if it is not provided. A short paragraph above the first question does that job. What an intake form is covers the form type in general.

Step 2: the agreement fixes scope, price and the exits

The brief tells you what the client wants. The agreement records what you have promised. The business.gov.au contractor guidance lists what a contract should carry: both parties’ legal names and ABNs, the scope of work with dates, the payment terms including GST and the timing of payments, who owns intellectual property, confidentiality, insurance, dispute resolution, termination and how variations are made. It also notes that a contractor automatically owns the IP they create unless the contract says otherwise, which matters to any client paying for design or code.

Two finished agreements show the two common shapes. The Beacon Systems service agreement is one document for an ongoing service: twelve numbered clauses, a four level severity table, client obligations such as access and a primary contact, fees with a CPI adjustment and a liability cap. The statement of work is the other shape: a short document for one project that sits under a master agreement, with five dated deliverables, ten business days to accept each one, and five assumptions written down before work starts.

Use the answers from the brief as the source for the scope clause. If the client ticked “Payments” and “Member login” as features, those two words belong in the scope, and anything not ticked belongs in the out of scope list. For the payment clause itself, the payment terms clause page has sample wording and the variants. If the client wanted a proposal before an agreement, how to write a business proposal sets out the order buyers read one in.

Step 3: signing, with every party and no retyping

A signature step fails in two ways: the wrong person signs, or the client’s accounts team later cannot match the agreement to their own records. The service agreement signing example handles both. The client’s managing director and the provider’s director are both signers, the order switch is off because the start date is fixed, and both invitations go out in the same minute.

The detail worth borrowing is the optional purchase order box on the client’s signing page. The client types its own reference into it, so the signed agreement carries the label their accounts system will look for every month. When the certified agreement is complete, it is emailed to both signers and the sender.

Before you send, check the signer list against the brief’s sign off question. If the person who approves the work is not the person who can sign a contract, you need both names in your records, even if only one signs.

Step 4: the kickoff meeting works from the brief

A kickoff meeting has one job: to turn the signed scope into the first two weeks of work. Build the agenda from the brief rather than from a template. Every “We have some” answer on content becomes a date for the rest of it. Every unticked box on the domain and hosting checklist becomes a task with a name against it, because a missing registrar login found in week one costs a phone call and found at launch costs the launch.

The ASBFEO’s advice on healthy business relationships is to set clear expectations in writing and to communicate early, before problems arise. Its five step dispute guide makes the practical point: keep clear, written notes of discussions and agree a record at the end of the meeting. Send that record the same day. It is the document you will point to when a decision is remembered differently in month three.

Invite the person who signs off on the work. A kickoff without the approver produces a plan that gets rewritten at the first review.

Step 5: the first invoice is part of onboarding

The first invoice is where onboarding quietly fails. The ASBFEO’s invoice tips are specific: find a contact in the client’s accounts area and check what they need to process your invoice, double check that the details match the order, confirm the invoice was received, and check ten days before the due date that it has been processed.

The ATO sets the floor for what a tax invoice must show. For sales under $1,000, seven details: that it is a tax invoice, the seller’s identity and ABN, the issue date, a description with quantity and price, the GST amount, and the extent to which each sale is taxable. Sales of $1,000 or more also need the buyer’s identity or ABN. The Lantern Creative tax invoice meets both: both ABNs, the buyer’s purchase order PO-8842, 14 day terms with the due date printed as a date, and the bank details in their own block.

Put the purchase order reference from the signing page on the invoice. That is why it was collected.

The checklist at a glance

The table at the end of this article lists eleven steps from the first enquiry to the first processed invoice, with the document each step produces and who owns it. Print it, or copy it into the task list you already use. Most steps take minutes; the value is in doing them in order and not skipping the ones that feel administrative.

Common mistakes

Sending the agreement before the brief is back. The scope clause then comes from memory of a call, and memory is generous to whoever is remembering.

Letting the kickoff add scope. Anything new raised at the kickoff goes into a written variation, signed by both parties, before anyone works on it.

Leaving the approver out. The person who signs off on the work should see the brief, the scope and the kickoff record, even if someone else signs the contract.

Invoicing without the client’s reference. An invoice that cannot be matched to an order waits in a queue until someone emails you.

Waiting for the due date to pass. Checking ten days before the due date costs one email. Chasing a late payment costs far more.

Build it

Start with the form builder page, then follow the guide to creating a form with AI to describe the brief you need and edit the result. Build the intake form as a classic form in the paginated layout, so each step shows whole. A file upload field takes 1 to 10 files, and its allowed types are two toggles, images and PDF, which suits logos and brand guides. A table field draws a fixed number of rows that the client cannot add to, so set it to three when you ask for a top three.

On a classic form a field’s description is shown only on file upload and photo fields, so put the privacy notice and any instructions in a paragraph block above the questions. Turn on the email alerts add-on so each brief reaches one address as it arrives, or the webhook add-on to send it to your own system; the webhook fires once per submission with no retry. For the agreement and the invoice, a document’s signature block turns each party into one signer, each with a name, an email and a signing order.