An MSP onboarding checklist is the list of tasks that takes a new client from the final discovery call to normal service. It covers discovery, contacts, the contract, admin access, support channels, and recurring work, then a review at day 30. Every task has an owner and a date.
Copy or download the checklist below. It comes from the team behind SherpaDesk, a helpdesk and professional services automation (PSA) tool a small IT team can run alone.
Key takeaways
Onboarding runs from the final discovery call to the day tickets, time, and invoices run on their normal rhythm. Discovery happens before signing, because you can't price what you haven't counted. The proposal shows the client a week-by-week plan, the managed services agreement says what onboarding covers, and the SLA template sets the targets.
CISA tells MSP customers to ask for a "transition plan to support a smooth integration of the IT services" before they sign. It adds that any downtime should ideally fall at a time the client chooses.
We'd keep one baseline list for every client and add client-specific tasks on top. One r/msp member described their approach: "0/30/60/90 day onboarding processes in SOPs that are reviewed and adjusted as needed."
Seven phases and a handoff gate, each with an owner and a time window. Brackets mark what you fill in.
Onboarding checklist for a new clientONBOARDING CHECKLIST FOR A NEW MSP CLIENT
New client: [company name]
Signed: [date] · Onboarding and billing start: [date]
Handoff to normal support: [date], after the gate
Owners: MSP lead [name] · Lead tech [name]
Client contact [name] · Billing [name]
PHASE 1. DISCOVERY DATA (final call, before signing)
Owner: MSP lead · With: client contact
[ ] Users, devices, servers, sites: counts
[ ] User list and where documentation lives
[ ] Line-of-business apps and their vendors
[ ] Internet, phone, and software contracts
[ ] Current provider and their exit date
[ ] Known problems the client wants fixed first
PHASE 2. ACCOUNT AND CONTACTS (day 1)
Owner: MSP lead
[ ] Client account in the PSA, one record only
[ ] Onboarding ticket created, To Do list attached
[ ] Primary contact and a backup
[ ] Billing contact and invoice email
[ ] Who approves spend, and up to what amount
[ ] Who may approve admin or access changes
[ ] After-hours contact for urgent tickets
[ ] Your MSP contact introduced to the client
PHASE 3. CONTRACT AND RATE PLAN (days 1-3)
Owner: MSP lead · Check: billing
[ ] Contract type: [flat, hourly, prepaid, mix]
[ ] Monthly fee $[__] · Included hours [__]
per [calendar month / other period]
[ ] Hourly rate for out-of-scope work $[__]
[ ] Onboarding fee $[__] or hours billed as
[project at $[__] / included / not billed]
[ ] Billing start date and first invoice date
[ ] SLA start date, targets, support hours,
and urgent channel copied from the signed
agreement into the helpdesk
[ ] Test: one time entry lands on this contract
PHASE 4. ASSETS, USERS, AND ADMIN ACCESS (week 1-2)
Owner: lead tech · With: client contact
[ ] Admin logins moved to your password manager
[ ] MFA on every account your team uses
[ ] Remote access tested on every covered system
[ ] Old provider's accounts disabled
[ ] Shared passwords the old provider knew:
rotated after transfer, dependencies checked
[ ] Asset list imported: device, user, location
[ ] Warranties and licenses recorded
[ ] Unknown devices and accounts: purpose,
dependencies, and owner listed
[ ] Agreed monitoring, security, and backup
tools deployed on covered systems
[ ] Test alert reached the right person
[ ] First restore test passed
PHASE 5. PORTAL AND EMAIL DROPBOX (week 2)
Owner: lead tech
[ ] Support address forwards to the dropbox
[ ] Test email from a client user became a ticket
[ ] Client portal live; sign-up limited to
known client email domains
[ ] Users told how to reach support: email,
portal, phone for urgent issues
PHASE 6. TO DO TEMPLATES (week 2-3)
Owner: lead tech
[ ] Recurring work scheduled as tickets:
[backup restore test, access review,
patch report] every [__]
[ ] Each recurring ticket carries its To Do list
HANDOFF GATE (before normal support starts)
Owner: MSP lead
[ ] Access, intake, alerts, and restore confirmed
[ ] Blocking issues closed
[ ] Deferred work: client decision, owner, date
[ ] Client told the handoff date
PHASE 7. FIRST-30-DAYS REVIEW (day 30)
Owner: MSP lead · With: client contact
[ ] Tickets by channel: email, portal, phone
[ ] Hours logged vs included hours
[ ] Deferred work from the gate on schedule
[ ] Contacts and approvers still correct
[ ] Date of the next review: [date]Onboarding and billing can start at signing; normal support starts at the handoff. Phase 3 is done before the first billable ticket.
Collect the counts: users, devices, servers, sites, and the apps the business can't run without. Get the user list and find out where documentation lives. List every vendor contract you'll be calling about. Ask the client to name the outgoing provider and the date their access ends.
One r/msp member's list includes "Go through incumbents contract" and "Go through incumbent invoices."
Create one client record in your PSA, then an onboarding ticket with this checklist attached as its To Do list. Then fill the contacts a 7 p.m. ticket needs: a primary and a backup, billing, and after-hours. Add who approves spend, and up to what amount.
Add one more: who may approve admin or access changes. CISA advises organizations to define a vendor's required privilege and access levels before the contract is awarded. Then introduce the person at your MSP they'll deal with.
Enter the contract exactly as signed: type, monthly fee, included hours and their period, and the rate for out-of-scope work. Decide how onboarding hours are handled: a one-time fee, a project billed hourly, or included. Set the billing start and first invoice dates. Copy the SLA start date, targets, support hours, and urgent-contact channel from the signed agreement into your helpdesk.
Test it before the first ticket. Log one time entry against the client and check it lands on the right contract at the right rate. Our how to start an MSP guide covers how to set recurring pricing.
One r/msp member wrote: "We charge onboarding fee = 1 month's services ... This covers support during the onboarding within reason."
Move every admin login into your password manager, turn on MFA for each account your team uses, and test remote access to every covered system. A joint CISA advisory says contracts should "require MFA to be enforced on all MSP accounts used to access customer environments." Disable the outgoing provider's accounts once their work ends. After the transfer, rotate shared admin passwords they knew, once you've checked which service accounts depend on them.
For Microsoft 365 clients, request access through granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP), which the customer must explicitly grant. A relationship runs up to two years. Auto-extend can renew it six months at a time until turned off, except with the Global Administrator role. With auto-extend off, copy the expiration date from Partner Center into your calendar.
Then build the inventory. CIS Control 1 asks you to inventory, track, and correct every device that connects, including remote and cloud ones. CIS Control 5 asks you to manage credentials for user, administrator, and service accounts.
Deploy the agreed monitoring, security, and backup tools on covered systems. Then send a test alert to the right person, and run the first restore test. CISA lists continuous backup of critical data and system configurations among its customer controls.
"To be honest, 90% of the time when we take over a client we get a password sheet and thats it (if we are lucky)," one r/msp member wrote.
Common mistake: disabling an account nobody can name. Establish its purpose, dependencies, and owner first, then agree the change with the client. A service account behind the payroll export can look like a stale user.
Give the client one support address and forward it into your helpdesk so each email becomes a ticket. Send a test from a real user's mailbox, not yours. Since 2021, Microsoft 365's default outbound spam setting disables automatic external forwarding for new organizations, so check the tenant allows it.
Open the client portal and limit sign-up to known client email domains. Then tell users how to reach you: email, portal, and a phone number for urgent issues only.
Turn recurring work into scheduled tickets: a backup restore test, an access review, a patch report. Each carries its own To Do list, so the technician who opens it knows what "done" means.
Normal support starts only when access, intake by email and portal, the test alert, and a restore are confirmed, and blocking issues are closed. Work you agree to defer gets the client's decision, an owner, and a date. Then tell the client the handoff date.
At day 30, sit down with the client contact and go through numbers, not impressions. Count tickets by channel: if most still arrive by phone, the email address hasn't landed. Compare hours logged with included hours, separating the onboarding project from support. Check the deferred work from the gate, confirm the contacts, and book the next review.
Say you run Ridgeback IT, a three-technician MSP: Dana Ortiz is the MSP lead and Sam Lee the lead tech. Your new client is Calder Land Surveying, with 24 users, two offices, and Microsoft 365. The agreement is signed Monday, November 2, 2026; onboarding and billing start that day, and the handoff to normal support is November 20.
| Phase | Owner | When | Filled in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Discovery | Dana | Oct 20–30 | 24 users, 26 laptops, 1 server, 2 sites; user list and file-share docs received; old provider out Nov 13 |
| 2. Contacts | Dana | Nov 2 | Onboarding ticket with To Do list; primary Maria Chen, office manager, spend to $1,500; backup and access changes Tom Calder, partner; billing Ana Ruiz; after hours Tom Calder's mobile |
| 3. Contract | Dana | Nov 2 | $2,400 a month with 10 included hours per calendar month; $150 an hour out of scope; onboarding project at $125 an hour; first invoice Nov 2; SLA start Nov 20 per the agreement, targets and hours entered; test time entry checked |
| 4. Access and assets | Sam | Nov 3–13 | MFA and remote access tested; GDAP approved Nov 5, auto-extend off, expiry in the calendar; old accounts disabled and shared passwords rotated Nov 13; 29 devices: the 27 counted plus 2 nobody could name; tools deployed, test alert reached Sam, restore passed Nov 12 |
| 5. Portal and email | Sam | Nov 9–12 | Dropbox test ticket from Ana arrived; portal sign-up limited to known client domains; staff email sent Nov 12 |
| 6. To Do templates | Sam | Nov 12–19 | Monthly restore test and patch report, quarterly access review, each with its own list |
| Handoff gate | Dana | Nov 19 | All checks confirmed; unknown devices identified Nov 18: plotter print server kept, old laptop retired; deferred: print server replacement, approved by Maria, owner Sam, by Dec 15; client told Nov 19 |
| 7. 30-day review | Dana | Dec 2 | See below |
At the review: 31 tickets, 22 by email, 6 through the portal, 3 by phone. November support hours came to 7.5 against 10 included, and the 14 onboarding hours bill as $1,750 on the project. The next review is booked for March.
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Build the checklist as a To Do template, then assign it to the onboarding ticket, link it to a ticket class, or attach it to a scheduled ticket. Import the client from QuickBooks, FreshBooks, Xero, or an Excel file. Give the account its own rate plan and a contract with prepaid hours; uninvoiced time collects in Ready to Invoice by contract.
Assets import from an XLSX template, each assigned to an account, a location, and a user; Asset Management is on High Camp, $55 per agent per month ($50 billed annually). The account gets its own portal and its own dropbox address. A Support Portal setting limits new-user sign-up to email domains already known in the system.
Who this isn't for
Onboarding a new technician is a different list. Agent rollout happens in your monitoring tool: we don't build RMM. We integrate with yours, and the stack stays yours.
This checklist plans 30 days from signing to the review, with most work in the first three weeks. Size and the old provider's handover set the pace. One r/msp member said: "In most cases, we finish onboarding in less than a month, but there are definitely outliers."
Decide before you sign. The options are a one-time fee, a project billed hourly, or hours absorbed into the contract. One r/msp member charges "1 month's services" as the fee. Whichever you pick, log onboarding time against its own project, so the 30-day review shows what the client really cost (phase 3).
The download above is plain text, so it pastes into Word or Google Docs and prints to PDF. For Excel, put one task per row with columns for phase, owner, due date, and done. Keep the phase numbers, so your copy lines up with the filled example.
From the client: the signed agreement, a user list, approved contacts, and vendor contracts and recent invoices. From the outgoing provider: admin credentials, network documentation, and device and license lists. Verify all of it against your own inventory. Once their work ends, disable their accounts; CISA advises customers to disable MSP accounts "no longer managing infrastructure."
A client onboarding checklist brings a whole company under your service once. Employee onboarding happens every time that client hires someone: accounts, a device, licenses, and access. Make the second one a To Do template too, and link it to a new-hire ticket class, so each new-hire ticket gets the same steps.
On the SLA start date in the signed agreement. Carry that date, the targets, and the support hours into your helpdesk in phase 3. Our managed services agreement guide covers the clause, and the SLA template sets the targets by priority.
Patrick co-founded SherpaDesk and has led it as CEO since 2013. He has worked with IT service providers since 1998, first on network projects for schools and government offices, then on the helpdesk software their technicians use every day.