Signed up on Monday, still missing bills in three weeks
A new client agrees to work with you. The account manager sends a welcome email listing what is needed: a copy of a recent bill for each site, the company registration number, the registered address, a billing contact and a signed letter of authority. The client's office manager replies with two bills and a question. A week later, three more bills arrive, one of them for a site the client sold. The LOA comes back signed but with the wrong company name, because it was the trading name.
Three weeks in, the account manager is still building the client record from pieces, and the first useful piece of work has not started.
Why onboarding drags on
The client wants to help, but the information you need is spread across their organisation, and a list in an email is easy to half answer.
- Bills are held by finance, site details by operations and signatories by directors.
- Emails with attachments arrive in pieces, in no particular order.
- Company names, trading names and registration numbers get mixed up.
- Meter numbers are typed from bills by your team, which is slow and error-prone.
- Nobody can see at a glance what is still missing.
Every missing item means another email, and each email waits in someone's inbox at the client.
A slow start costs more than time
The first weeks set the tone of the relationship. A client who is chased for the same things repeatedly starts to wonder whether this is how things will always be. If a contract end date is close, a slow onboarding can squeeze the time available for the tender.
For the consultancy, every new client costs account manager hours in admin before any fee or commission is earned. As you grow, onboarding becomes a bottleneck that no amount of effort from the account managers can fully remove.
One onboarding flow for every new client
We build an onboarding flow the client completes online, with your team watching progress.
- The client receives a link to their onboarding page, which can be shared with colleagues who hold different pieces of information.
- Company details are entered once and checked against Companies House through its public API, so the registered name and number are right from the start.
- Sites are listed with addresses, and a recent bill is uploaded for each. Bills are read with a model such as OpenAI or Anthropic Claude to pre-fill supplier, meter numbers and account numbers, which the client confirms.
- The letter of authority is generated with the correct registered name and sites, and signed electronically by the right person.
- A checklist shows the client and your account manager what is complete and what is missing, and reminders go out automatically for anything outstanding.
- When complete, the client, sites, meters, LOA and contacts are created in your CRM and contract register, ready for work to begin.
| Item | By email | Onboarding flow |
|---|---|---|
| Company details | Typed from an email, sometimes wrong | Checked against Companies House |
| Bills and meters | Attachments retyped by your team | Uploaded and read, client confirms |
| LOA | Signed with the wrong name | Generated from checked details, e-signed |
| What is missing | Worked out from the inbox | Shown on a checklist |
| Client record | Built by hand | Created in your systems |
The flow collects and checks information. What your consultancy needs from a new client, and what it does with it, stays your policy.
A first week spent on real work
The client's office manager, finance team and a director each complete their parts in the same few days. Bills are read and meters pre-filled as they are uploaded. The LOA is signed in the right name first time. The account manager sees the checklist fill up and starts reviewing contracts before the last bill arrives.
Every new client arrives in your systems in the same shape, which makes everything after onboarding more reliable, from renewals to reporting.
Is onboarding holding up new clients?
- New clients take weeks to send everything you need.
- Your team retypes meter numbers from bills.
- LOAs have been signed with the wrong company name.
- Nobody can see what is still missing without reading emails.
- Account managers spend their first weeks on admin.