Success

We've had a lot of input from accountants and bookkeepers about onboarding and we think we're close to a final design. But before we unleash the developers (!), we want to give you the chance to have a say.....otherwise, it may not be what you expected!

WARNING! There's a lot of material so take your time reading it through and of course, ask questions!

Here's how we think about client onboarding and how we think it will work on onkho:

What is onboarding?

Well, we don't think it's just about signing a letter of engagement!

We think its about making sure that you've done everything you need to so you can deliver the service that you've promised to your client. So..

• creating a contract between you and your client so you can get paid
• keeping the contract valid as things change so you can keep on getting paid
• making sure that all the admin things you need to do get done
• making sure that all the legal things you need to do get done

That means, our feature needs to include things like:

• creating, sending and signing a letter of engagement
• updating the letter of engagement as things change e.g. the fees (go up!)
• tracking that proof of identity has been seen, what it was and who saw it
• making sure that anti-money laundering / know your client formalities are repeated

How we think it should work

We've divided onboarding into 3 activities:

• creating and maintaining payment terms e.g. amount, method and frequency of payment etc.
• creating and maintaining agreements e.g. letters of engagement, terms of business, variations/updates etc.
• creating and tracking checklists of admin/legal things to do e.g. get proof of identity, set up the client in the tax return system
• repeating checklists of admin/legal things to do to make sure that everything you've done and collected is still current

So onkho will manage each of the above activities.

We also think that onboarding work should be treated just like any other job e.g. see them in the planner, allocate them to team members, find them in insights etc.

What you would have to set up

For clarity, default versions of all of these will come out of the box ready for you to use or customise:

• templates for your engagement letter and terms of business - you can have as many versions as you want
• checklist of admin/legal things to do
• services to cover repeating checklists e.g. renew identification papers every 3 years etc.

What you would see

• new properties covering payment terms
• an onboarding tab for each client where you can create/maintain agreements and admin checklists
• new templates tagged as "Terms of Business" or "Engagement Letter" or "Variation of Terms" in your template manager
• new services in your service catalogue such as "Renew AML checks (Annually)" etc.

How you would onboard a new client

• go to the onboarding tab and create a new agreement and send it to the client - this will appear as a "Sign agreement" job in the planner
• go to the onboarding tab and start a new admin checklist - this will appear as a "Client admin" job in the planner
• you will be notified when the client signs the agreement
• you will see for each step in the admin checklist, who ticked it complete and when
• you can track the status using the planner, dashboard and insights just as you would any other job
• add the "Renew AML checks (Annually)" service (or similar) to the client

How you would change the terms for an existing client

• go to the onboarding tab and create a new agreement and send it to the client - this will appear as a "Sign agreement" job in the planner
• you will be notified when the client signs the agreement
• you can track the status using the planner, dashboard and insights just as you would any other job

What your client would see

• they would receive an email with a list of the services you're offering, the payment terms and a link to sign the agreement
• the link will take them to a web page that will display your long form Terms of Business and where they have to click on an accept or reject button

The above proposal is pretty seamless and elegant from the client's perspective but controlling and tracking the process requires some upfront setup but once you're done, it will be automated and best of all, you can see all the work in the same place and use insights to ask questions about it!

Yes indeed. You will be able to create a fee plan (price, payment method/terms), standard terms of business and an agreement that will be sent to the client for approval. The approval will be in the form of clicking a button that will be subsequently confirmed by email for two-factor security. Of course, we're always about optionality and customisation so you'll also be able to simply create the agreement without a fee plan (just write in your quotation details) and send that :)

We now have pretty well formed ideas around our first phase delivery and if there is demand, I would be delighted to host a webinar to walk people through it. We have lots of diagrams (!) drawn up so you can get a really good feel for how it will all work. If you're interested, please leave a comment on this thread. 

Onboarding has been released. You can find out more about it here.

Best of all, it's a no-cost extra for paying customers!

Of course, like everything this is a phase 1. Looking forward to hearing ideas for improvements as you all get stuck into it.

With this message I will close of this thread. Please post improvement ideas separately.

Exciting times!