New client. Same fifty emails.

The slow week between yes and started.

The new client says yes. Someone sends the welcome email: photo ID, last year's accounts, bank details, the signed authority. A week later half of it has arrived, spread across four email threads, one photo taken at an angle. Someone chases. Chases again. Fishes the attachments out of the inbox, renames them, files them — then types the same name, address and reference into three different systems.

It shows the client something, too. The firm that impressed them in the pitch opens the relationship by asking for the same thing twice. The process runs on memory and inbox archaeology, and no amount of care fixes a checklist that lives in someone's head.

How it actually works.

1. One link, one list. Each new client gets a single link listing exactly what you need, in plain English — not a PDF checklist and a "please see attached". They can photograph it, upload it or type it, there and then, on their phone.
2. The chasing runs itself. Polite reminders escalate on their own schedule and stop the moment the documents land. Nobody spends Friday afternoon nagging — and no client gets nagged for something they already sent.
3. What arrives is checked, not just collected. AI reads each document and deterministic checks verify it — right document, right period, right name — before it's filed against the client. A person only sees the one that fails a check, not the ninety-nine that pass.
4. Entered once, everywhere. The client's details flow into your practice system, your billing and your files in one pass, so nobody retypes the new client into three places. Onboarding is really several modules — e-signing the engagement, a portal, the first invoice — and each can join the flow later. You start with the one that hurts.

What module one looks like.

Onboarding touches everything — signatures, billing, folders, portals. We don't build everything at once. Module one is usually the document request, because that's where the hours and the awkwardness live.

• The request with the chasing built in

  One link per client, reminders that escalate and stop on their own, and documents checked and filed as they arrive — live in about a month. Your team stops chasing; your clients stop being asked twice. Then the next module joins the flow, if it earns it.

What slow onboarding costs.

There's no off-the-shelf number for what slow onboarding costs, and we won't invent one. It's specific to you: the admin hours each new client absorbs before the paid work even starts, the jobs that go stale while documents dribble in, and the first impression that working with you means being chased. The only real figure is the one you measure at your own front door.

That's part of what the process audit does: we walk your onboarding end to end, count the hand-offs and the chase emails, and show you which ones a module would remove.