Client Onboarding Software Built From Your Own Checklist
You already know your onboarding process. It lives in a spreadsheet someone shepherds by hand. Leonardo, our AI agent, turns that checklist into guided onboarding software with stages, owners, a client portal, and automatic nudges. Backed by a real database.
Clients are falling through the cracks, and everyone can feel it
A new client signs. Sales forwards the email thread to your onboarding coordinator with a note that says "kicking this over to you." That thread is the handoff. Somewhere in it are the client's entity name, their point of contact, and a half-answered question about billing.
The coordinator opens the checklist spreadsheet, copies last quarter's tab, and starts working the list. Request the W-9. Collect the signed service agreement. Chase down the insurance policy documents, the prior carrier's declarations page, the admin credentials for the systems you are taking over. Schedule the kickoff call. Each row has a name in the "owner" column that nobody actually checks.
Three weeks in, the client emails to ask why your billing team just requested the W-9 they already sent to two other people. Nobody can say where the file went. Nobody can say where the client is in the process, either, because the spreadsheet says whatever it said the last time someone remembered to update it. An onboarding that should take two weeks takes six. The client's first real experience of your firm is repeating themselves.
None of this is a people problem. Your coordinator is probably the most organized person in the building. The problem is that a checklist spreadsheet has no memory of who was asked for what, no way to prompt the next step, and no view the client can see. We wrote up the full anatomy of this failure in why onboarding spreadsheets quietly lose clients.
What guided client onboarding actually looks like
Your checklist already encodes the process. Guided onboarding software makes the process run itself instead of relying on one person's follow-through.
Stages with real owners
Intake, document collection, credential handover, kickoff, go-live. Each stage has an assigned owner and cannot be marked complete until its required fields are filled. The "owner" column becomes an actual assignment, with accountability attached.
A portal the client can see
The client logs in and sees exactly where they are: step 3 of 7, two documents outstanding, kickoff call scheduled for Thursday. They stop emailing "any update?" because the update is always in front of them.
Structured data, not attachments
The W-9 gets uploaded once, into a field that belongs to that client's record. Policy documents, signed agreements, and contact details live in a database, so no one ever asks for something the firm already has.
Automatic nudges
A document sits unsubmitted for four days? The client gets a polite reminder without your coordinator writing it. An internal step stalls? Its owner gets pinged. The chasing that used to consume half a role now happens on its own.
An audit trail
Every request, upload, and status change is timestamped with a name attached. When a client asks why something took nine days, you can answer with the actual history instead of a reconstruction from memory.
One answer to "where are they?"
A dashboard shows every active onboarding, its stage, and how long it has sat there. The six-week onboardings get spotted in week one, while there is still time to fix them.
From checklist spreadsheet to onboarding system, with Leonardo
Leonardo is our AI coding agent. It reads your spreadsheet the way a developer would read a spec, then builds the software around it. The full process is documented in our Excel to App master guide.
Upload the checklist you use today
Head to Excel to App and upload your onboarding tracker exactly as it is. Messy tabs, color coding, notes in cell comments. Leonardo reads the stages, the owners, and the items you collect at each step.
Leonardo builds the first working version
Within the session, your checklist becomes an application: a client record for each onboarding, guided steps with required fields and document upload, a client-facing portal, and reminder logic. It runs on a real database from day one.
Refine it in plain English
"Insurance clients skip the credential step." "Add a field for the prior carrier." "CC the account manager on every nudge." You describe the change, Leonardo makes it. Your process logic goes in, exactly as your best coordinator would explain it.
Go live with your team and your clients
Invite your team, send clients their portal links, and retire the spreadsheet. The application keeps evolving as your process does, because changing it is a conversation rather than a development contract.
The three tools you have probably already tried
Most firms evaluating client onboarding software have been around this loop at least once.
Checklist SaaS
A shared to-do list with a nicer interface than your spreadsheet. It still has no idea that insurance clients need a declarations page or that credential collection comes after the signed agreement. Your process logic stays in someone's head.
Forms tools
Good at collecting a batch of answers once. But onboarding is a sequence over weeks, with internal steps between the client-facing ones. A form cannot chase a missing document or tell you which of nineteen active clients is stuck.
Enterprise onboarding platforms
Genuinely capable, and priced for companies with an implementation team and a six-figure software budget. At 10 to 200 employees you end up paying for a hundred features to use nine of them.
LlamaPress builds the fourth option: software shaped to your process, at a price shaped to your size. See pricing for what that costs.
Questions buyers ask us
How much does client onboarding software from LlamaPress cost?
You can upload your checklist and get a working first version free through Excel to App. Ongoing plans are priced for small and mid-sized firms rather than enterprises, and current tiers are listed on our pricing page. There is no implementation fee and no per-seat surprise at renewal.
How long does it take to go from spreadsheet to a live onboarding system?
The first working version is built by Leonardo in your first session, usually within the hour. Most teams spend a few days refining stages, fields, and nudge wording, then run one real client through it before switching over fully. Weeks, not quarters.
Do my clients get their own portal?
Yes. Each client gets a login where they see their progress, upload requested documents, fill required fields, and check what is outstanding. They see only their own onboarding, and your team controls exactly which stages are client-visible.
We handle sensitive client data. How is that treated?
Your application runs on its own dedicated instance with its own database, so client records are never pooled with other companies' data. Documents are stored with access controls and every access is logged. For regulated industries such as healthcare or financial services, talk to us on the contact page about your specific compliance requirements before you build.
Who owns the software and the data?
You do. The application is yours, the database is yours, and your data is exportable at any time. Paid plans include access to the source code, so you are never locked into us to keep the system you built.
Your checklist is the spec. Upload it.
The spreadsheet you shepherd by hand already describes your ideal onboarding. Leonardo will build the software version, with owners, a client portal, and nudges that never forget to follow up.