What to collect from a new bookkeeping client

Why onboarding goes wrong in week two

The new client signs. You send a friendly email asking for “last year’s accounts and access to the bank feed”. They send last year’s accounts. Then you need the payroll reports. Then you need the sales tax registration number. Then you discover there is a second credit card. By week three you have sent five separate requests, the client has started to think you are disorganised, and you have not reconciled a single month.

The fix is not a better follow-up email. It is asking for everything at once, in a form that lets the client work through it in one sitting, with a clear statement of which items block the work and which do not. What follows is that list. It is written to cover US, UK, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand practices, so skip the tax rows that do not apply to you.

1. Software and bank access — do this first

Nothing else matters until you can see the file. Ask for these on the day the engagement letter is signed, before the client’s enthusiasm has worn off.

• Accountant or advisor access to the ledger. In QuickBooks Online the client goes to Settings, then Manage Users, then Accounting Firms, then Invite, and enters your email. In Xero it is the Users screen with the Adviser role. Send the click path, not the request — “please add me as your accountant” produces a support ticket, the five words of the menu path produces access.
• Confirmation the bank feeds are actually connected and current. A live feed that stopped authorising in March is worse than no feed, because you will not notice for a month. Ask them to open the banking screen and tell you the date of the most recent transaction on each account.
• A list of every account and card, including the ones they forgot. Ask explicitly: business current accounts, savings, every credit card, PayPal, Stripe, Square, Wise, and any personal card used for business spending. Name them individually in the request. “All accounts” reliably returns the main one.
• Merchant and payment processor logins or reports. Read-only or report-export access to Stripe, Square, PayPal, Shopify — whatever takes the money.
• Receipt capture app, if they use one. Dext, Hubdoc, or the receipt capture built into the ledger. If they do not have one, decide now whether you are introducing one, because it changes what you ask for every month afterwards.
• Tax authority agent authorisation. The one with a real lead time — start it on day one. HMRC agent authorisation codes arrive by post. The ATO, the IRS and the CRA all have their own linking process. None of them is instant, and all of them will hold up your first filing if you leave it.

Never ask for a password. Every one of these has a proper delegated-access route, and a client emailing you their banking password is a problem you have created for yourself. If a client offers, decline it in writing and send the invite path instead.

2. Entity and registration details

Small, boring, and the source of most first-quarter filing errors. Collect it once and put it somewhere you will find it in eight months.

3. The historical file

How far back you go depends on why you were hired. Three common cases:

• Taking over a maintained file from another bookkeeper. You need the last set of finalised accounts, the closing trial balance, and the last filed sales tax or VAT return with its workings. That is usually enough.
• Taking over a file that has been done badly. Assume you are doing a clean-up and scope it separately before you quote — see the catch-up document checklist, which covers how far back to go and what to collect per month.
• A business that has never had books kept. Go back to the start of the current tax year at minimum, and to the date of incorporation if the entity is under two years old. Say the date out loud in the request so there is no ambiguity.

The standing list, whichever case applies:

• Last filed financial statements or tax return
• Closing trial balance at the handover date
• A backup or export of the previous ledger, if it is not the one you are taking over
• The last two filed sales tax, VAT, BAS or GST returns and the workings behind them
• Any correspondence from the tax authority in the last twelve months, including the ones they have not opened
• Loan agreements, finance and lease agreements, and the current balance on each
• The fixed asset register, or a list of anything bought over the capitalisation threshold

4. Opening balances and the handover pack

This is the part clients cannot help you with, so ask the outgoing bookkeeper directly rather than making the client relay it. You want, at the takeover date:

• Bank and credit card balances, plus the reconciliation report showing what is outstanding
• Accounts receivable ageing — who owes what, and how old
• Accounts payable ageing
• Sales tax / VAT control account balance and the period it covers
• Payroll liabilities: unpaid wages, tax withheld and not yet remitted, pension or super owing
• Any accruals, prepayments and provisions carried forward, with the workings
• Loan and director/owner account balances

5. Payroll, if there is any

Payroll is the single most common reason a new engagement blows its budget, because it arrives as a surprise in week two. Ask on day one whether there is payroll at all — and ask specifically about contractors, because owners frequently do not count them.

• Current employee list with start dates, pay rates and pay frequency
• Access to the payroll system, or the last three payroll reports if it is run externally
• Year-to-date payroll figures if you are joining mid-year
• Pension, superannuation or retirement plan details and the current contribution rates
• Contractor details and the paperwork that goes with them — W-9s in the US, CIS registration for UK construction, ABNs in Australia. Ask now; chasing a W-9 in January is a job nobody enjoys.
• Benefits, expense policies and anything that changes the taxable position of a payment

6. What you will need every month from here

Set this expectation during onboarding, not in month two when the first close slips. Tell the client exactly what recurs and when it is due, in the same breath as the one-off list. The standing monthly pack for most small businesses is short:

• Statements for every account and card for the period, including the dormant ones
• Receipts for anything not already showing on a statement you hold
• Sales invoices raised, whether or not they have been paid
• Supplier bills received
• Details of any cash paid in or taken out
• An explanation for anything unusual — a large transfer, a new supplier, an asset purchase

If you would rather have that generated for a specific client type and cadence, the free month-end close checklist tool builds the list for trades, hospitality, e-commerce, professional services and nonprofits, for monthly, quarterly or annual cycles. It takes about twenty seconds and there is no sign-up.

The extras, by client type

The general list above covers most of it. These are the additions that catch people out, and asking for them on day one signals that you have done this before in their industry.

The four things everyone forgets

1. The second bank account. Almost every small business has one the owner does not think of as a business account — an old sole trader account still taking a standing order, a savings account holding a tax reserve. Ask for a screenshot of the full account list from online banking rather than a typed list, and this stops being a problem.
2. The personal card used for business spending. Every owner does it and almost none volunteer it. Ask the direct question: “Is there a personal card or account you sometimes pay business costs from?”
3. Subscriptions billed to a founder’s personal email. Software, domains, cloud storage. They never appear in the documents the client sends because the client never sees the receipts.
4. Anything paid in cash. Not a moral question, a completeness one. Ask it plainly and early, in a matter-of-fact tone, and the answer is usually honest. Ask it in month six and it sounds like an accusation.

The onboarding request email

Short, split into blockers and everything else, with a single place to put the files. Two rules: never make the client decide what format you want, and never bury the deadline in the middle of a paragraph.

Hi [Name],

Great to have you on board. To get your first month closed on time I need two things from you today, then a short list of documents you can work through this week.

TODAY — these two block everything else, and take about a minute each:

1. Add me to [QuickBooks Online / Xero]: Settings → Manage Users → Accounting Firms → Invite, and enter [your email]. (Xero: Settings → Users → Invite a user → Adviser.)
2. Reply with a screenshot of your account list from online banking, so I can be sure I have every account and card — including any personal card you sometimes pay business costs from.

THIS WEEK — the documents:

- Last set of accounts or tax return
- Last two [VAT / BAS / sales tax] returns and the workings
- Statements for every account and card from [date] to today
- Any letters from [HMRC / the ATO / the IRS / the CRA] in the last year
- Loan, lease or finance agreements with the current balance
- Payroll: current employee list, pay rates, and the last three payroll reports
- Contractor details and their [W-9s / CIS registration / ABNs]

Upload everything here: [link]

If anything on that list does not exist, tell me it does not exist rather than leaving it blank — that is genuinely useful information and it stops me chasing you for it.

I will come back with questions once I am in the file. Nothing else is needed from you until then.

[Your name]

The line about telling you when something does not exist is worth keeping. A blank is ambiguous and generates a chaser; “there is no payroll” closes the item. That one sentence removes a surprising amount of follow-up.

Send it as one list, not six emails

The single biggest improvement available in onboarding is structural rather than verbal. A client working through an email has to track their own progress: which of the eleven things have they sent, which are still outstanding, and what did the third one mean again. Most people abandon that around item four and reply with whatever is easiest, which is never the access you actually needed.

A list they can tick through, item by item, with your one-line instruction attached to each item, does the tracking for them. Whatever you use to do that — a shared folder with named subfolders, a document request tool, a numbered list in a spreadsheet — the principle is the same: the client should be able to see what is left without having to reconstruct it from an email thread.

That is the job ClientVault does: the list becomes a link, the client opens it without creating an account, each item carries its own instruction, and the reminders for the outstanding items go automatically at day 3, 7 and 14. It is free for three clients if you want to try it on the next one who signs. If you want the honest version of how it compares to the established option in this category, that is on the Content Snare comparison page, including the parts where they win.