Onboarding

What it means

Onboarding brings a new client or employee into a working relationship: verification and paperwork, signing the contract, setting up access, agreeing how to communicate and hand over material, and a first cycle under supervision.

In an accounting firm it also has a statutory side. Before the contract is signed, client identification and risk assessment under AML take place; without them the relationship cannot begin.

Onboarding does not end when the contract is signed. The contract says what is to be done; onboarding is the period in which it starts being done under the agreed rules, and it ends only once the first period runs without improvisation. Identifying the client includes establishing its ultimate beneficial owner, and that is not a one-off step: the data is kept up to date throughout the relationship.

How it works in practice

The practical part is short and fixed: the mandate contract, a power of attorney for the authorities, read access to the ledger and the bank, an agreed workflow and document deadlines.

Where the client comes from another provider, a handover runs in parallel, with balances agreed as at the switch date. The first month is always reviewed more closely than the ones that follow.

At the start we ask the client for a list of bank accounts, loan and leasing contracts, employees and registrations, such as for VAT or OSS, and for access to the official electronic mailbox. From that material we build a calendar of obligations for the whole year, so the first deadline does not catch us out.

What to watch out for

Onboarding put off comes back as errors in the first closing: missing opening balances, contracts nobody knew about, unrecorded advances. Half a day at the start saves a week in March - and the same logic applies at the other end, in offboarding.

If who does what is not agreed in writing at the start, the client may assume the accounting firm also pays its taxes or watches invoice due dates. Arrears or penalties then arise in the gap between expectation and contract, and the dispute over who should have acted costs more than the original amount.