Client Onboarding Template
A board for the weeks between a signed contract and a delivered first milestone, built for agencies and services businesses, not for tracking the deal that got you here.
Most stalled onboardings are stuck in "collecting access." This template makes that visible instead of quiet.
Why most client onboarding templates stop being used
A signed contract is not the start of work. It's the start of a different, slower kind of work: getting logins, brand files, approvals and a first call on the calendar before anyone can bill a real hour. Most agencies track this in a spreadsheet or a shared inbox for the first few clients, and it holds up fine while there are three or four accounts to remember. It stops holding up around the tenth client, for predictable reasons.
Nothing distinguishes a new client from an old one. The onboarding checklist lives in the same project as the ongoing retainer, so half-finished onboarding steps get buried under this week's actual deliverables. A brand-new client and an eighteen-month account end up on the same task list, sorted by due date rather than by how fragile the relationship still is. This template keeps onboarding as its own board, separate from delivery work, so a stalled client stands out instead of scrolling past.
Waiting on the client looks the same as waiting on you. A card sitting in "collecting access" for eleven days because the client hasn't sent a logo is a different problem than a card sitting there because nobody asked. Both look identical on a plain to-do list, so account owners lose track of which stalled clients need a nudge and which just need patience. The template makes that distinction a column, not a mental note the account owner has to hold.
The handoff from sales has no seam. A deal closes on a sales board (see the sales project template), and onboarding is supposed to begin the moment the contract is signed. Without a defined starting card, that handoff depends on someone remembering to tell someone else, usually over chat, sometimes not at all until the client emails asking why nothing has happened. This board starts at "Signed" on purpose: that is the one fact the sales side needs to hand over, and everything after it belongs to delivery.
The first invoice has no anchor. Agencies that bill on milestones often can't send the first invoice until a first deliverable ships, which means a stalled onboarding is also a stalled cash flow problem nobody notices until the monthly numbers come in short. Tying the board's finish line to a real deliverable, not a calendar date, keeps that connection visible.
The structure, and why each part is there
The board's starting point. A card lands here the moment a contract is countersigned, carrying the client name and the account owner, nothing else yet. It is the single handoff point from a sales pursuit to an active client relationship, and the only fact that needs to travel between the two boards.
A card doesn't move past this stage without a calendar invite attached. Teams that skip a formal kickoff call tend to discover misaligned expectations three weeks in, once real deliverables are already late and the conversation about scope happens under pressure instead of at the start.
Logins, brand guidelines, prior work, approvals: capped at four clients at once per account owner. When the column is full, the next signed client waits rather than being started badly by someone already juggling five onboardings and forgetting which client's password reset they're still waiting on.
The built-in wiki holds one page per client with the specific items still outstanding: which access, whose approval, what's overdue. Any line on the page can become a task, so "waiting on the logo" is a trackable card, not a note nobody revisits until the client asks why the homepage is late.
The card that closes onboarding. Reaching it is the actual definition of "onboarded," not a date on a calendar, but a shipped piece of work the client has seen and, for milestone billing, the moment the first invoice can go out.
Once a client's first deliverable ships, new requests route into the same triage inbox every other project uses, with its own WIP-limited columns. Onboarding is a one-time board; delivery is the ongoing one, and the two are never mixed on the same list.
Logging a day's hours takes about five seconds and sits next to the task just finished, so time spent on an onboarding, often unbilled or bundled into a setup fee, is visible from the first kickoff call rather than reconstructed later from memory. That number is often the thing that finally convinces an agency to price onboarding into the next quote instead of quietly absorbing it again.
How to use it
- 01Open a workspace and load the template. It arrives with a sample onboarding already on the board, columns and limits included, so you can see a client move through it before you add a real one. Free for up to five people, permanently.
- 02Add a card the moment a contract is signed, not when work actually starts. The card existing is what makes the handoff from sales visible, even if nobody has touched the account yet.
- 03Set the access-collection limit to match your account owners' real capacity, not an aspirational number. Four concurrent onboardings per owner is a reasonable starting point for a small agency; adjust down if kickoff calls keep slipping past the first week.
- 04Write the outstanding-items checklist on the client's wiki page during the kickoff call, while the client is still on the line to confirm who owns each item, their marketing contact, their IT team, or the agency itself.
- 05Move the card to done at first deliverable, and open a delivery project. Onboarding is finished; ongoing work belongs on its own board with its own limits and its own definition of done.
- 06Review stalled cards weekly, not monthly. A client stuck in "collecting access" for two weeks is recoverable with one phone call; stuck for six weeks, the account is often already at risk without anyone having flagged it.
None of this requires ShipSprint specifically. The columns and the limit are the actual idea, and they transfer to any tool that supports both. It's written up here because agencies that skip the limit tend to onboard every new client at once, which is how all of them end up late and the account owner ends up apologising to everyone in the same week.
- Onboarding is a separate board from delivery, so a stalled client is visible instead of buried under this week's work
- A limit on concurrent onboardings stops every new client from being started badly at once
- "First deliverable shipped" is the real finish line, not a date written into the contract
Common questions
Yes. All templates, including this one, are included on the Free plan, which covers up to five users and two projects and doesn't expire. A paid plan buys more seats, not access to the template. See pricing.
No, this board starts where a sales pursuit ends. The period before signature, with qualification, proposals and negotiation, belongs on the sales project template. The two boards meet at exactly one point: a signed contract.
That's a workspace decision, not a template constraint. You can invite the client as a guest on their card, or keep the board internal and report status manually. See how boards and permissions work.
The next signed client sits in the Signed column until capacity frees up: visibly waiting, rather than being pulled into active onboarding and handled at a fraction of the attention it needs. That visibility is usually the argument that gets an agency to hire or reassign before quality slips.
Related pages
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