Client onboarding without the email ping-pong: AML, ID and documents

A new client says yes. Then, for the next fortnight, somebody in the practice sends emails asking for a passport scan, a utility bill, a signature, some bank details and a set of prior year accounts, mostly one at a time, mostly to someone who is enthusiastic on day one and unresponsive by day nine.

Client onboarding is the least glamorous part of running an accountancy practice and one of the most expensive. It is unbilled, it is repetitive, and it happens at the exact moment a new client is forming their first real impression of what working with you is like.

What the manual version actually costs

Count it honestly for one client. The engagement letter drafted and chased. Anti-money-laundering identity checks collected, reviewed and filed. Authorisation to act with HMRC. Professional clearance from the outgoing accountant. Records requested and received. Software access set up. Somewhere between three and six hours of somebody's time, almost none of it billable, spread over two or three weeks of low-grade nagging.

The compounding cost is worse. A slow, scrappy onboarding teaches a new client that you are disorganised, before you have done a single piece of work that would tell them otherwise. It is the strongest signal you will ever send about how the relationship works, and most practices send it by accident.

The two things that cause nearly all the delay

Sequential requests. Asking for one thing, waiting, then asking for the next. Every handover is an opportunity for the client to go quiet. Five sequential asks over two weeks is five chances to stall.

Email as the container. Attachments get buried, the client cannot see what is outstanding, nobody knows whose turn it is, and sensitive identity documents end up sitting in an inbox indefinitely. That last point is not just untidy, it is a genuine data protection problem that practices carry without thinking about it.

What good looks like

One link, everything at once. The client receives a single link to a page that shows every outstanding item in a list, with what is done and what is not. Upload ID here. Sign the engagement letter here. Confirm these details. Nothing sequential, no waiting on you between steps.

Visible progress. A completion state, even a simple three-of-six, is remarkably effective. People finish things they can see the end of.

Secure upload, not email attachments. A passport scan should go into storage you control, with a retention policy, not into a mailbox. This is both a compliance improvement and one of the clearest trust signals available to a professional services firm.

Electronic signature. The engagement letter is very often the longest single delay in the whole process, purely because printing, signing and scanning is annoying enough to postpone.

Automatic reminders. Two or three, scheduled, listing only what is still outstanding. This removes the part of the job everyone hates, which is being the person who nags.

A visible end. A short confirmation that says onboarding is complete, here is what happens next, here is who to contact. The relationship starts on a note of competence.

On AML specifically

Identity verification is the step most likely to stall, because it feels intrusive and because people rarely have a passport scan to hand. Two things help disproportionately.

Say why, in one line. “We are required to verify identity before we can act for you, the same as a bank.” Most resistance is not objection, it is confusion about why an accountant wants a utility bill.

And be exact about what you accept. “Photo ID and proof of address” produces three rounds of correspondence. A short list of precisely which documents work, with an example, usually gets it right first time.

Build or buy

Plenty of practice management platforms do this, and if you already pay for one, use it before building anything. The honest answer for most practices is that the tooling exists and is simply not switched on.

Building your own is worth it when the off-the-shelf flow does not match how you actually work, when you want it to live on your own domain as part of the client experience rather than as a third-party portal, or when onboarding volume is high enough that small friction costs real money. That is the sort of thing we build, and it is usually a smaller project than people expect.

Common questions

Will older clients cope with a portal? Generally yes, provided there is one link and no account to create. Most friction comes from asking people to register and remember a password. Keep a manual route open for the few who want it.

How long should onboarding take?With everything parallel and reminders automated, most practices get from yes to fully onboarded inside a week, with the client's own share of it taking maybe twenty minutes.

Does this need to be on our website?It does not have to be, but it is better when it is. A flow that lives on your domain and looks like your practice is part of the experience. A generic third-party portal is a handover to someone else's brand at the moment you most want to look established.

Part of our guide to website design for accountants, and related to client portals for professional services firms. If onboarding is eating your week, tell us how it works now and we will show you what to automate first.