Onboard a new client with no friction and nothing forgotten

Signing a new client is good news that costs money. Between the first yes and the first genuinely productive piece of work, you have to get an engagement letter signed, document the client identity checks, obtain tax and payroll authorisations, request the handover from the previous accountant, set up bank access and enter a dozen parameters in the practice software. None of it is hard, all of it eats time, and a single missing document blocks the rest.

In practice the sequence stretches over six weeks because nobody is steering it. The client sends back two documents out of five, the follow-up waits for someone to remember it, and production starts on a half-built file. An AIOS runs that sequence end to end: it knows what is missing, who to ask, in what order, and it keeps chasing until the file is genuinely complete.

The problem

• The onboarding checklist runs to twenty lines and lives in one person's head or in a spreadsheet everyone fills differently: no two clients go through quite the same path
• The client is motivated in week one and much less so in week three: whatever is not provided at the start almost never arrives later
• The handover from the previous accountant drags on, and the year opens with no closing balance, no ledger export and no fixed asset schedule
• None of that setup time is billed, and it all lands on the first year of the relationship, the one where the margin is already thinnest

How the AIOS handles it

It works through the onboarding checklist without skipping a line

Articles of association, company registration, director ID, beneficial ownership details, bank details, direct debit mandate for fees, signed engagement letter. The list adapts to the structure: a property holding company, a trading company with ten staff, an independent professional and a non-profit do not need the same documents, and the AIOS applies the right variant instead of sending the generic list.

It obtains the authorisations and the access, one at a time

Authority on the tax portal, registration for the payroll and social filings, connection to the banking aggregator, invitation to the client portal. Each request goes out on its own, explained in two sentences a business owner can act on, with the exact steps to follow. A request that is refused or incomplete gets chased with a screenshot of the step that is stuck, not with the same email sent again unchanged.

It steers the handover from the previous accountant

It prepares the letter to the outgoing firm, tracks the reply and lists what has to arrive: closing balance, last year's ledger export, filed returns, fixed asset schedule, journals, payroll records in progress. Every item received is ticked off, checked and filed. Anything still missing after two weeks is flagged to you with a draft chaser, because that is exactly what will block the first year end.

It sets the file up and hands it back to you

VAT regime and filing frequency, financial year dates, the industry agreement that applies, headcount, the calendar of obligations, the document collection plan and the client's preferred channel for reminders. Once everything is in place you get a one-page sheet: what is signed, what is connected, what is still outstanding, and the three points worth raising at the first review meeting.

A concrete example

Other use cases: Chasing missing paperwork · Answering the same client questions · Tax and employment law monitoring · Chasing unpaid fees · The firm's newsletter

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