Client onboarding that finishes before your kickoff call
The workspace, docs, calendar invite and welcome sequence that spin up the second a proposal is signed.
The week after a client signs is the worst week of the relationship to look slow — and it's exactly when most agencies look slowest. The proposal was sharp, the sales calls were tight, and then... three days of silence while someone sets up folders.
Everything that happens on signature
The trigger is the e-signature webhook. From that single event, the workflow runs the entire checklist your ops person used to grind through:
- Workspace created — project in your PM tool from the right template, Slack channel or shared space, folder structure with naming conventions applied.
- Documents generated — kickoff deck, intake questionnaire and brief templates pre-filled with everything you already know from the proposal and CRM.
- Access requested — the client gets a checklist for ad accounts, analytics and whatever access your service needs, with automatic polite reminders until it's done.
- Kickoff scheduled — calendar invite sent based on team availability, agenda attached.
- CRM updated — deal marked closed-won, handoff notes routed from sales to delivery.
Why this matters beyond the hour count
Onboarding is a margin problem disguised as an admin problem. Those setup days are unbillable, they're error-prone (every agency has sent a client someone else's template), and they delay the start of billable work. One fourteen-client agency we automated went from five days to under an hour of setup per client — with every step logged for their audit trail.
It's also the gateway drug to broader agency automation: once onboarding is automatic, weekly client reporting is usually next, then brief generation. Each one removes work that scales linearly with client count — which is exactly the work that stops you growing.