Time Leak Audit
I map how the work happens today, estimate the hours that could be recovered and rank the opportunities against your goals. Under two hours of your time.
From £950 · fixed fee · excluding VATAutomate client onboarding
Every new client, the same
twenty small jobs.
Winning the client is the hard part. What follows should not need you at all.
At a glance
- The task
- Taking a new client from signed to set up
- Who it hits
- Firms whose onboarding repeats with every client
- What changes
- Paperwork collected online, the agreed steps triggered, each task owned
- Proof
- A payroll firm and my own agency, see below
The problem
Why onboarding never gets easier
A new client says yes. Then somebody sends the engagement letter, chases the signature, asks for the bank details, asks again, creates the record in three systems, sets up the billing, sends the welcome email, and adds four tasks that only exist in one person’s head.
It works. It works every time, in fact, which is why nobody questions it. But it is the same twenty small jobs for every client, and it lands exactly when the client is forming their first impression of how organised you are.
The cost is rarely the hours. It is the gap. Between the yes and the start, things go quiet, documents arrive late, and the relationship begins with a chase.
The first week tells your client what working with you will be like.
The change
What it looks like before,
and after
Today, by hand
- You send the engagement letter and wait, then chase the signature
- You ask for details by email and ask again a week later
- You retype the same information into two or three systems
- Billing is set up separately, by hand, sometimes later than it should be
- Internal tasks exist in somebody’s head or in a message
- Nobody can say where a given client is in the process without asking
Once it runs itself
- The client completes their paperwork online, at their own pace
- Missing documents are requested automatically, politely, until they arrive
- The record is created once and carried across the systems that need it
- Billing is set up from the same approved data, at the agreed moment
- Each internal step has an owner and a due date, visible to the team
- Anyone can see which clients are mid onboarding and what is outstanding
Onlineclient paperwork, at a payroll firm serving around 200 client companies
Premium Paye · payroll services
New clients used to return their paperwork manually. Digital onboarding was one of three connected processes built for the founder, alongside invoicing and payment collection. Together they took his monthly admin from around twelve hours to under one.
Read the Premium Paye case studyBuilt it
for myselfbefore ever selling it to anyone else
for myselfbefore ever selling it to anyone else
My own agency, London
Before 10PM I founded and ran an after school nanny agency in London, employing the nannies. Hours were counted automatically in Deputy, carried through to Xero, with direct debits collected from families and payments made out to the nannies. I built that chain because I was the one who would otherwise have spent every Sunday on it.
More about how I workHow we get there
Three paid phases.
You decide after each one.
Onboarding is a good second project. It is visible to clients, it repeats predictably, and the rules are usually clearer than people expect once they are written down.
Process Design
A working session with your team, then detailed mapping: the steps, the data, the business rules and the exceptions that decide how the build behaves.
Separately scoped · fixed fee · excluding VATImplementation and handover
I build it in the tools you already use, test it against the agreed scenarios, document it and show your team how to run it without me.
Fixed project price · quoted after Process DesignBefore any of it, a free fifteen minute conversation. Bring the process as it actually happens, not as it should.
Will it feel impersonal to the client?
That depends entirely on what you automate. Automate the chasing, the forms and the internal setup, and you free up the part that should be personal: the call, the welcome, the first conversation about their business. Most clients experience a well built onboarding as attentive, not cold, because nothing is forgotten and nothing arrives late.
Our onboarding is different for every client.
Usually it is different in two or three known ways, not infinitely. Design starts by separating what genuinely varies from what only feels like it does. What varies stays with a person. What repeats gets built.
Do we need new software?
Often not. Most firms already own a CRM, a document tool and an accounting system that can talk to each other. Where a real gap exists, I say so and explain the cost before you commit to anything.
What about compliance and identity checks?
Those steps can be collected, tracked and chased automatically, but the decision stays with the person who is professionally responsible for it. Anything that needs professional judgement is flagged for a human, never decided by the system.
How long before it is running?
It depends on how many systems are involved and how clean the data is. I set the timing and the scope at the end of Process Design, before the build is quoted, so you are not agreeing to an open ended project.
Keep reading
Related
Your business
What happens in your first week?
Walk me through the last client you onboarded. Fifteen minutes is usually enough to see where the time goes.
15 minutes · No charge
Prefer to write? [email protected]