A 47-step runbook covering the full client onboarding lifecycle from agreement signing to day-90 checkpoint. Steps are organized by phase (pre-flight, day-0, week-1, month-1, day-90) with owner assign
A 47-step runbook covering the full client onboarding lifecycle from agreement signing to day-90 checkpoint. Steps are organized by phase (pre-flight, day-0, week-1, month-1, day-90) with owner assignments, time estimates, and client-facing communication scripts for each milestone.
Onboarding failures are the leading cause of early client churn. Most fail because the MSP treats onboarding as a technical setup task rather than a managed transition. This runbook treats onboarding as a project with defined stakeholders, gates, and escalation paths.
Assign an onboarding project owner before you start. Run the pre-flight checklist before day-0 — stopping here if you don't have a signed agreement, a client contact, and credentials is intentional. Use the phase templates as project tasks in your PSA. Send the client communication scripts as-is or lightly customized.
This SOP reflects common MSP onboarding practices and should be adapted to your service catalog, tooling, and client types. Some steps (RMM deployment, backup verification) will need tool-specific customization.