What should a bookkeeper's new-client onboarding process and document checklist include?

What are the steps, and when is onboarding finished?

Run these steps in order, since each feeds the next:

1. Settle who the client is. Confirm which entities are in scope and learn each one's registrations, activity, records and running obligations.
2. Fix the cut-over date. Agree when the firm's responsibility starts and how much history to load.
3. Send the request list and access requests. Track each item to completion.
4. Contact any predecessor. Do so only once the client has authorised it in writing.
5. Set up or verify the ledger file. Log coding decisions as they are made.
6. Agree opening balances. Post nothing dated after the cut-over until the client has agreed them.
7. Run the first period. Tell the client in writing how it runs and what they send, then run it; add one-off checks to the recurring routine.
8. Hand over. Close the onboarding record and confirm the move to the recurring routine.

Onboarding is finished only when all of these are true:

• The client has agreed the opening balances in writing.
• Every request item is received, not applicable, or recorded as missing with an assumption the client confirmed.
• Everyone working on the file has access in their own name at the agreed level.
• The first period has closed with every bank, card and loan account reconciled forward from its agreed opening balance.
• The onboarding record is complete and the client knows what happens next.

What must you learn about the client first?

Everything downstream depends on four sets of facts:

• Entity. Record the legal name, entity type, owners, employer identification number, state registrations, fiscal year end and whether the client reports on the cash or accrual basis.
• Activity. Find out what the business sells, every way customers pay it, and who pays suppliers and how.
• Existing records. Establish who kept the books, on what platform, to what date, and whether accounts were reconciled.
• What already runs. List payroll, sales tax, loans, contractor payments and anything paid automatically.

The state of the books at acceptance decides the rest of the work:

So does the client's platform:

What goes on the request list, and why?

Group the list by record class and give every item a purpose, so one with no purpose for this client is marked not applicable rather than chased. Each row also shows the form needed, its status, who owes it and who at the firm is waiting on it. An example for a small accrual-basis employer follows:

How is the list tracked to completion?

Give every item one state, and change it only on evidence:

• Received. The item arrived and was checked as complete and usable.
• Outstanding. The item shows when it was requested and when it is next chased.
• Not applicable. The item shows why, so nobody requests it again.
• Missing. The item will not arrive; the entry shows the assumption used in its place and who at the client confirmed it.

Chase on a fixed schedule; after the second chase, phone the person who owes the item and agree a date. An item that supports an opening balance blocks agreement of that balance, while other items may follow during the first period if they stay logged. When an item will never arrive, mark it missing, write down the assumption used in its place, and have the client confirm it. An open-ended "send everything" request, with no cut-over date or completion state, never finishes.

What access do you need, and in whose name?

Ask for the least access that does the agreed work: NIST's glossary defines least privilege as restricting users' access privileges to the minimum necessary to accomplish assigned tasks. Apply it per system:

• Accounting platform. Each person at the firm gets a user in their own name at a role covering the agreed work. Intuit's help page on user roles and access rights in QuickBooks Online (updated September 8, 2026) says each email address on a plan is assigned a role and that the plan decides how many people can hold billable roles, so confirm there are enough seats before inviting anyone.

  The same page says that in Intuit Accountant Suite the "Standard all access (can't pay bills)" role can go to people who should review company information but not pay bills, such as an accountant, for clients with QuickBooks Online Advanced/QuickBooks Bill Pay Elite. It lists Standard all access as including adding, editing and deleting employees, making deposits and transferring funds and, with Intuit QuickBooks Workforce, managing payroll, and describes the variant only as unable to pay bills; check those rights against the agreed scope before granting the role.

• Bank and card accounts. Ask for view-only access in your staff's own names where the bank offers it; otherwise the client sends statements monthly.
• Payroll. Report access is enough to reconcile payroll; rights to run payroll or edit pay details belong only in an engagement where the firm runs payroll.
• Document systems. Where records sit in a shared drive, receipt-capture tool or payment processor dashboard, ask for access in your staff's own names, limited to the folders or reports the work uses, with the client as owner; otherwise the client sends the documents.

The client keeps ownership of every account and subscription and stays primary administrator; the firm holds named users the client can remove. Never work from the client's own login: actions cannot be traced to a person, the firm inherits every right the client has, and removing the firm means changing the client's credentials.

Whether the firm may initiate or release payments is settled in the scope before access is requested, and roles follow it.

Have the client remove existing users and apps no longer needed, including the predecessor once records are handed over. Keep an access register of system, person, role, date granted, who granted it and end date. The platform steps for inviting a firm are a separate question.

How do you choose the cut-over date and how much history to load?

The cut-over date is the first day the firm is responsible for. Record the date and have the client agree it in writing. How errors later found in earlier periods are handled belongs in the engagement letter, a separate question. Where the date falls matters:

• At the start of a reporting period. Balances as of the day before carry forward, and the prior period's income and expense stay in the prior records.
• Part way through a reporting period. The period's figures must be complete, so bring in income and expense from its start to the cut-over, as detail or monthly totals, and record which transactions each preparer owns.

On a mid-period cut-over, each invoice and bill open at cut-over must reach income or expense exactly once. On the accrual basis it was counted when issued or received, so it comes in only as a receivable or payable; on the cash basis it has not been counted, and it reaches income or expense when paid.

Load no more history than the reporting period needs. Older detail stays in the prior records: keep the prior file's trial balance, general ledger, reconciliation reports and open-item lists as at cut-over.

How do you set, check and agree opening balances?

A platform records whatever it was given, so check every opening balance against outside evidence: bank and card balances to statements, with items in transit listed individually; loans to lenders' statements; receivables and payables to aged lists, then to what is collected or paid; payroll liabilities to the provider's reports; sales tax payable to the last filed returns and taxable sales since; and assets to purchase invoices and the last depreciation schedule. On a start-of-period cut-over, opening equity should equal prior closing equity; on a mid-period cut-over, load the trial balance at the day before cut-over with the period's income and expense in their own accounts, and equity before the period's profit should then equal prior closing equity plus the period's contributions less draws. A difference means a balance, or the prior figures, is wrong.

Intuit's help page on entering opening balances in QuickBooks Online (updated August 25, 2026) takes a bank or credit card account's opening balance from the real statement and tracks opening balances in an Opening Balance Equity account; at handover, every amount there should trace to an agreed balance.

Send the client the opening balance schedule with its evidence, and get written agreement before posting anything dated after cut-over; work posted on an unagreed base has to be unwound when the base moves. When a balance cannot be substantiated, keep the unproven amount visible rather than letting it vanish into equity: record the figure used, how it was estimated, what evidence is missing and who confirmed it, and revisit it when evidence arrives.

What does an opening entry look like on each basis?

A client joining on January 1 had, at December 31, 18,400.00 in checking with nothing in transit, unpaid invoices of 3,000.00 and 1,250.00, an unpaid bill of 900.00, equipment costing 12,000.00 with 4,800.00 of depreciation taken, and a 7,500.00 equipment loan. On the accrual basis the opening entry is:

Post this entry only when standing up a new ledger; a continuing file's balances are verified, not re-entered. Intuit's opening-balances page says QuickBooks Online offsets an opening balance entered with a new account to Opening Balance Equity, so leave any such account out and adjust the equity line so the entry balances.

The invoices and bill were the prior year's income and expense, so collecting or paying them later is not income or expense again. On the cash basis they are not opening balances: the IRS's Publication 538 says that under the cash method income is included in the tax year it is actually or constructively received and expenses are generally deducted in the year actually paid. (Publication 538 adds that a business producing, buying or selling merchandise generally must use an accrual method for those sales and purchases, with exceptions.) List them on the onboarding record, record each when paid, and drop the receivable and payable lines; owner's equity then opens at 18,100.00, with debits and credits each 30,400.00. Either way, each item reaches income or expense once.

What do you ask a predecessor, and on whose authority?

Route everything through the client. The AICPA's Code of Professional Conduct says a member in public practice shall not disclose any confidential client information without the client's specific consent. So get the client's written authority for the predecessor to talk freely with you before making contact.

The Code's records-requests interpretation says that on an initial request for client-provided records, meaning records belonging to the client that were provided to the member, the member should make those in its custody or control available to whoever provided them; it may charge a reasonable fee for retrieving, copying and shipping them but may not withhold them for nonpayment of that fee. Unless agreed otherwise, member-prepared records it holds and has not already provided, such as adjusting entries, that relate to a completed and issued work product should also be made available, but may be withheld while fees for that work product are due. The interpretation also says the member's work products, the deliverables set out in the engagement terms, should be made available but may be withheld if fees for them are due, if incomplete, to comply with professional standards, or if litigation over the engagement or its work is threatened or outstanding. It adds that the member's state board of accountancy may not permit withholding certain records even when fees are due, and that the board's more restrictive rule then governs.

The Code says the AICPA bylaws require members to adhere to its rules; a predecessor who is not a member may not be bound by them, so the request still goes through the client.

Ask the predecessor, through the client, for these items:

• The ledger file or export, and the trial balance at the day before cut-over
• The last reconciliations, with uncleared items
• Open-item lists for receivables and payables
• Adjusting entries made outside the ledger, and the depreciation schedule
• Which payroll periods and returns they handled
• Known problems and unreconciled differences

If the predecessor cannot be reached, work from outside records as for incomplete books, and list every opening balance that could not be confirmed with them.

What coding decisions do you record?

Onboarding is where the client's treatments get decided, so log each decision with who made it, when and why. The log covers at least these:

• The accounting basis and fiscal year
• The chart of accounts, mapped from any old accounts
• How each income stream and its processor fees are recorded
• How owner draws, contributions and personal spending are handled
• The client's threshold for recording purchases as assets
• Classes, locations or projects the client reports by
• Bank rules, recurring transactions and connected apps, and what each does

The firm-wide ledger standard is a separate question; this log holds what is specific to this client.

What changes when the client runs payroll?

Add to the request list year-to-date figures by employee and, for the current quarter, a report for each payday showing its date and the totals of each pay item, deduction and tax, plus the pay schedule, pay items, deductions, benefits, recent filed payroll returns and federal and state registration numbers. Agree in writing who handles each pay run, deposit and filing for periods before cut-over and which the firm takes on after it. Intuit's help page on adding pay history to QuickBooks Online Payroll (updated August 12, 2026) asks for the year-to-date and per-payday reports when a business new to that system has already paid employees this year. When payroll moves to a new system partway through the year, enter and check that history before the first pay run there; where the existing provider continues, check its year-to-date figures instead.

What changes when the books are missing or incomplete?

Build each opening position from records that do not depend on the old books: bank, card and loan statements, customer and supplier statements and payroll provider reports. The last tax return may have been prepared from the old books, so it is a cross-check rather than independent proof. Record each reconstructed figure as an assumption with its source, and get the client's written confirmation before work proceeds.

What changes when there are several entities?

Settle the entity boundary first, then run the request list, access register, cut-over and opening balances separately for each entity. If the structure is changing, fix which entity owns each account and transaction on each side of the change date. Balances the entities owe one another must agree on both sides before either entity's opening balances are agreed.

What does the first period check, and what is the client told?

In the first period, check these once:

• Each item open at cut-over clears once, at its full amount.
• The first pay run agrees with the year-to-date figures brought in.
• Each new coding rule puts transactions where the decision log says.
• Nothing dated before cut-over has changed since the client agreed the balances.

Before the first period starts, tell the client in writing the cut-over date and the firm's responsibilities from it, what they send each month and by when, which items are still missing and what was assumed instead, and that the first close takes longer because of these checks. Once it closes and every end condition is met, the client moves to the recurring bookkeeping checklist, a separate question.

What record must onboarding leave behind?

Keep one onboarding record per entity that a reviewer or successor can follow without asking anyone, holding these parts:

• Confirmed entity facts and registrations
• The cut-over date and responsibility boundary, including payroll
• The final request list, each item received, not applicable or missing
• The access register
• The opening balance schedule, its evidence and the client's written agreement
• Each assumption, its basis and who confirmed it
• The decision log
• The client's authority to contact the predecessor, and what the predecessor provided
• Unresolved items, each with an owner and date