The template
Copy this into a doc or your task tool. Replace the placeholders in square brackets. "Agency" items are yours. "Client" items are theirs, and the chaser named at the top follows them up.
- Client: [Client name]
- Start date: [Date]
- Agency lead: [Name]
- Client contact: [Name, email]
- Chaser for client items: [Name]
Phase 1: Before the kickoff (Day 0 to 3)
- ☐ Signed agreement and scope saved in the client folder. Owner: Agency, due Day 0
- ☐ Client folder, task project and client channel created. Owner: Agency, due Day 1
- ☐ Internal channel created for the account team, with the scope pinned. Owner: Agency, due Day 1
- ☐ Billing contact and invoice email received. Owner: Client, due Day 2. Chaser: Agency lead
- ☐ Name of the one person who approves work, plus a backup. Owner: Client, due Day 2. Chaser: Agency lead
- ☐ Kickoff call booked with the approver on it. Owner: Agency, due Day 2
Phase 2: Access (Day 1 to 7)
- ☐ Google Analytics 4: Viewer or higher on the property. Owner: Client, due Day 3
- ☐ Search Console: user added on the property. Owner: Client, due Day 3
- ☐ Google Ads: access to the account, or a manager link request accepted. Owner: Client, due Day 3
- ☐ Website: CMS login or a named developer who will make changes. Owner: Client, due Day 5
- ☐ Social accounts: access through each platform's own permissions, not a shared password. Owner: Client, due Day 5
- ☐ Email platform and CRM access, if they are in scope. Owner: Client, due Day 7
- ☐ Every access tested by the agency, with the result written in the channel. Owner: Agency, due Day 7
Phase 3: Brand and content (Day 3 to 10)
- ☐ Logos in vector and PNG. Owner: Client, due Day 7
- ☐ Brand fonts and colours, or a statement that none exist. Owner: Client, due Day 7
- ☐ Photos the client owns and has the right to use. Owner: Client, due Day 10
- ☐ Existing reports, past campaign results and anything promised to the client before. Owner: Client, due Day 7
- ☐ Competitors the client watches. Owner: Client, due Day 7
- ☐ Anything the agency must never say or show. Owner: Client, due Day 7
Phase 4: Kickoff and plan (Day 5 to 10)
- ☐ Kickoff call held. Notes posted in the client channel the same day. Owner: Agency, due Day 7
- ☐ Goals written as money in and money out, for example leads, sales or cost per lead. Owner: Agency, due Day 7
- ☐ Approval route agreed: who approves, in which channel, within how many working days. Owner: Agency, due Day 7
- ☐ Reporting day, format and recipients agreed. Owner: Agency, due Day 10
- ☐ First 30 days plan sent, with the first deliverable and its date. Owner: Agency, due Day 10
Phase 5: First deliverable and review (Day 11 to 30)
- ☐ Baseline numbers pulled and saved with the date range and the date pulled. Owner: Agency, due Day 14
- ☐ First deliverable sent for approval. Owner: Agency, due Day 21
- ☐ Client feedback received. Owner: Client, due Day 24. Chaser: Agency lead
- ☐ Changes made and the approved version delivered. Owner: Agency, due Day 28
- ☐ 30-day check: what worked, what is still missing, what the agency needs next. Owner: Agency, due Day 30
- ☐ Open client items moved to the regular task project. Owner: Agency, due Day 30
Chasing rules
- Day due plus 1: the chaser posts one line in the client channel naming the item and the person.
- Day due plus 3: the chaser emails the client contact directly, copying the approver.
- Day due plus 5: the agency lead calls. If the item blocks work, tell the client which deliverable moves and by how many days.
What each phase is for
Phase 1 settles who decides and who pays. Those two answers are the ones that stall a project three weeks in, so they come before any logins.
Phase 2 matters most in the first week. Access requests fail in small ways: the client adds the wrong email, grants Viewer when you need Editor, or sends a link that expired. That is why the last item is the agency testing every login and writing the result down.
Phase 3 can run slower. A logo or a font rarely blocks the first week of work. A Search Console user does.
Phase 4 turns the goals into numbers the client already cares about. Write the goal as money in and money out before you write it as impressions or followers.
Phase 5 ends on a review, so the 30 days close with a conversation before the account slides into regular work.
Mistakes that make onboarding drag
The checklist lives only on the agency side. Clients cannot do an item they cannot see. Share the client items in the client channel, with the due date beside each one.
Nobody owns the chasing. If the answer to "who follows up on the missing logo?" is "whoever notices", then nobody does. Put a name in the header of the template.
The long intake questionnaire. Skip it. A long form gets the easy fields answered and the hard ones left blank, and the blank ones are who approves, who pays and what success means. Ask those three on the kickoff call and write the answers down yourself, in the client's words. The call is short, and the form asks the client for an evening they will not spend.
Passwords in chat. Ask for access through each platform's own sharing, so you can be removed later and the client keeps control.
Treating a thumbs-up as approval. Agree on the approval route in Phase 4: one named approver, one channel, a stated number of working days. Then a silence has a rule attached to it.
Run it in Slack
Create a channel for the client and one internal channel for your team. If the client is not in your workspace, you have two options. A Slack guest in a single channel is free and sees only that channel, up to 5 per paid member; multi-channel guests are billed as members, and guests need a paid plan. Slack Connect shares a channel between two organisations, and each organisation needs a paid Slack plan. Pick one before the kickoff, because moving the client to a new channel in week 2 splits the history across two channels.
Post the checklist as a message in the internal channel and pin it. Post the client items only in the client channel.
If your team uses the Kipwise Agent, ask it in the internal channel: "Every Monday at 9, read this channel and list the onboarding items that are past due." It reads the channel and posts the list. Creating the tasks in Asana, ClickUp or monday.com waits for your Approve card, and a Gmail reminder goes out only after you approve it. The same checklist works without it. See Kipwise for Asana, ClickUp or monday.com for what it can create.
Related
The kick-off call template covers the call itself, and the project brief template covers the scope document. For new staff rather than new clients, use the employee onboarding checklist. For who owns each step in a small team, read client onboarding in a small team.
What to do next
Open your newest client's folder today and add one line at the top naming who chases missing items. Then copy Phase 2 into the client channel with a due date on each access request.
