Onboarding SOP
I mentioned an onboarding SOP (standard operating procedure) a couple months back and the questions came in. Here are just a couple…
I was wondering if you ever shared or be willing to share your SOP for discovery calls and onboarding? And I thought I heard you one time about an off boarding as well. Anyways just curious if you would be able to share.
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I realized I have no process to onboard, but I want to do it well. Have you shared yours anywhere by chance? If so, could you point me to it?
I’m actually hesitant to share mine because it feels like a constantly evolving SOP that’s never done—and also something that’s very firm / niche / client size specific.
But having a starting point is better than having nothing.
So here it goes…here’s mine (for consultants / agencies less than $3M in revenue):
Couple notes on what’s above:
It’s in Google Sheets - yes, I know there are amazing workflow tools that could do this. But I’m simple, I already pay for this, and it works for me. So why add more complexity?
Column B - all due dates are based on the Onboarding Start Week (12/1 in this example). If I update this one date, every other date updates automatically. Obviously, you can speed this up if you have capacity to onboard sooner than later
Column E - I removed the actual links to my internal docs, but everything in this column leads to a simple word doc (in most cases) that I can copy/paste my standard language into a email and change the client name / company name. My kryponite is trying to remember how I should word things, so this saves me a bunch of frustration. Again, I know there are fancier text expanders that can do this, but I like to keep it simple and cheap.
Generally, I usually add a bunch of To Dos or questions that I need to ask the client to the bottom of this spreadsheet based on what I find during the QBO review/clean up. This spreadsheet then becomes my go-to doc for the client until I feel like we’ve hit our monthly rhythm.
Here’s a link to the template if you want to make it your own. (template now available in Aligned Accountants)
Hope it helps! And, as always, feel free to shoot me back questions on this.
Cheers!
Erica
PS - I’m presenting at WorkflowCon (virtual) on Oct 22. Free to attend!
If you want to attend, use this link so the accounting conference gods will bestow favor on me:
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Behind-the-scenes in my business this week:
Speaking of onboarding docs, I’m almost done onboarding a new client (replacing one that offboarded in April) and am really close to signing a service agreement for another Tier 1 client (replacing the Tier 1 I lost in August).
The conversations with this new Tier 1 prospect are such a good reminder that “good fit” clients have a certain feel to them during the discovery phase :o)
In completely unrelated news…I stayed up late (10:15pm) watching the end of Penelope on Netflix last night and I’m still recovering from a jump-scare and the twisted plot that always left me asking: “What is this even about? Why am I watching this??”. I’m simultaneously frustrated that I spent 4 hours of my life on season 1 and want the next season to come out immediately so I can begrudgingly watch it as well. I only tell you this in case there is someone else who feels my pain. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
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