Client Engagement Onboarding Checklist

Engagement Operations checks the new client (and named affiliates) against the active client roster, prior engagements within the last 24 months, and any partner board seats or personal investments. Late COI checks at kickoff — after staffing has started — are a top reason engagements unwind painfully.

Document the conflict, the proposed mitigation (information barrier, team carve-out, or decline), and partner sign-off. Conflicts cleared with mitigation must be written down — verbal clearances do not survive a later dispute.

For advisory practices affiliated with an audit firm, run the AICPA / PCAOB independence checklist against the proposed team — including spouses' employment and personal investment portfolios. Treating independence as a one-time hire-time formality rather than a per-engagement gate is how firms get into trouble.

Capture whether this is fixed-fee, T&M, retainer, or milestone-based — the model drives billing setup, change-order discipline, and how scope creep gets handled. For T&M work, time tracking discipline starts now, not at kickoff.

List each deliverable with format (deck, report, model, playbook), owner, draft and final dates, and a written acceptance criterion. Vague acceptance language is the main reason fixed-fee engagements bleed margin in the closeout phase.

Mirror the SOW dates into Asana / Smartsheet / Monday with milestones, dependencies, and the critical path. Note any client-side dependencies (data access, SME availability, system credentials) that gate downstream work.

List firm-owned frameworks, models, and tooling brought into the engagement. Without a written background-IP carve-out, the client's standard work-product-belongs-to-client clause may transfer ownership of your own methodology to the client.

Create the project codes in BigTime / Harvest / Replicon before any consultant logs hours. T&M engagements that start with consultants tracking against the wrong code or no code at all routinely lose 5–15% of billable hours in the discovery phase.

Set monthly vs. milestone billing, the invoice template, the client's PO number (if used), the AP contact email, and any client-portal upload requirements (Coupa, Ariba, Tradeshift). Misrouted invoices push DSO from 30 to 90+ days.

Match the SOW payment terms (Net 30 / 45 / 60) into the AR system. Flag any client-pushed extension to Net 90 — that's a financing decision the partner should sign off on, not an AR detail.

Engagement partner is accountable to the client sponsor; engagement manager runs day-to-day delivery. Both names go into the SOW signature block and the client-facing kickoff deck.

Confirm allocations with Resource Management, set target utilization for each team member, and verify each has cleared the engagement-specific COI re-attestation. Flag any subcontractors so the contractor onboarding workflow runs in parallel.

Capture executive sponsor, day-to-day contact, steering committee members, working-group SMEs, and any change champions. Note who has acceptance authority for deliverables — getting this wrong delays sign-off at closeout.

Stand up the engagement Slack / Teams channel, the shared Google Drive or SharePoint folder with engagement-team-only access, and the project board (Asana / Smartsheet / Monday). Apply the firm's naming convention so the engagement is findable by alumni later.

Lock the weekly client status call day, time, attendees, and the status report template (RAG status, milestones, decisions needed, RAID log updates). The engagement manager owns the agenda; the partner attends monthly unless escalation is needed.

Mutual NDA must be in place before any non-public client information is shared, including in scoping conversations. Confirm survival period (typically 5 years post-termination) and that the NDA covers named affiliates and subcontractors.

Cover the named cases: client data lives on the firm-issued laptop with disk encryption and MFA, or on the client-provided VDI — never on personal email, personal cloud, or unmanaged devices. State the retention rule (typical: purge 90 days post-closeout unless the client DPA says otherwise) so the team isn't guessing later.

Confirm the firm's current Certificate of Insurance covers the engagement's coverage limits and any client-required additional-insured language. Some Fortune 500 clients require named-insured certificates issued specifically for the engagement.