If you run an accounting practice, a proper client onboarding checklist is the difference between a new client who feels looked after and one who calls you three times in the first week asking where things stand. Most small practices do not have one. They have a habit, carried in one person's head, that breaks the moment that person is busy.
What the checklist actually covers
A client onboarding checklist for an accounting practice is not a welcome email and a signed engagement letter. It is every step from the moment someone says yes to the moment their first set of books is clean and their first deadline is in your diary.
That usually means: collecting identity documents, getting access to their accounting system, pulling the prior year's records, setting up their file in your practice management tool, scheduling recurring work, and confirming who in their business you speak to about what. Each of those steps has a handoff. Each handoff is where things go quiet.
The problem is not that practice owners do not know the steps. It is that the steps live in email threads, sticky notes and memory. When a second client arrives the same week, something slips. When a third arrives, the first one notices.
Where automation fits in
The jobs that eat time in onboarding are rarely complicated. They are repetitive. Sending the same document request. Chasing the same missing bank statement. Copying details from one system into another. Reminding a client that you still need their VAT number.
Each of those is a job that can run on its own once it is set up properly. Not because the relationship is automated, but because the admin behind it is. The accountant still reviews, advises and decides. The system handles the follow-up.
Legarix builds these kinds of workflows in the tools a practice already uses. Nothing moves to a new platform. The work runs in your own accounts, on your own data. If we ever part ways, everything stays with you. That is how we build, on every engagement.
The starting point is a free audit. It maps what the onboarding process actually looks like today, where the gaps are, and which jobs are worth automating first. You keep that map regardless of what you decide to do next.
For a small accounting practice, a well-built onboarding process does two things. It gives new clients a clear, consistent experience from day one. And it stops the partner or practice manager from carrying the whole thing in their head.
Both of those are worth having.
The audit is free. legarix.co.za/audit
