The first week with a new client sets the tone. If you have to collect documents from new clients online, and you are still doing it by email thread and WhatsApp nudge, that tone is often frantic before the work has even started.
A new client needs to hand you an identity document, proof of address, banking details, a signed mandate, maybe a company registration certificate. Each one arrives in a different message, on a different day, from a different device. You chase the missing ones. They resend the wrong version. You file what you have and hope the rest follows.
It does not have to work that way.
What a simple intake process looks like
The job is to give a new client one place to go, one list of what you need, and one way to send it. That can be a short form that lives in your own Google Drive or SharePoint folder. The client opens a link, uploads each document, and submits. You receive a notification. The files land in the right folder, named correctly, ready to use.
No thread to search. No version confusion. No follow-up message asking whether they sent the VAT certificate or the tax clearance.
The same form can ask for the information you would otherwise type into your accounting system: trading name, registration number, contact details, preferred billing address. When the form is submitted, that data can write itself into a new record in Xero, Sage or whichever system you use. You do not retype it. It is there.
Where this fits in your week
Onboarding a new client is one of those jobs that feels quick but is not. The back-and-forth stretches across days. Each message is short, but there are many of them, and each one pulls you away from something else.
When the intake runs on a form, the client does their part in one sitting. You do yours when the notification arrives and everything is already there. The job shrinks from a week of nudging to a single review.
This is not complicated to build. It runs in your own accounts, on your own data. A form, a folder, a connection to your accounting system. Nothing sits on a third-party server you do not control.
If you also want to ask new clients the same qualifying questions every time, those go on the same form. The answers come back in a structured way you can actually use, rather than buried in a long email that is different every time.
The first step
Start by listing every document and piece of information you ask a new client for. That list is the form. Once you can see it written down, it is usually shorter than it felt, and it is obvious what can be collected in one go rather than dripped over a week.
That is the kind of thing a Legarix audit looks at. We map what the intake process actually costs your week, and we build the form and the automation in your own accounts.
The audit is free. legarix.co.za/audit
