Onboard a new customer

The failure this prevents is the common one: a customer pays, four systems each learn a different version of their name and plan, and the first person to talk to them has to ask questions the company already knows the answer to.

Steps

1. Start from the payment record, which is the only one that is definitely true: the legal entity, the plan, the amount, the billing contact, the start date.
2. Check whether they already exist in the CRM before creating anything — by domain, not by company name. A trial from four months ago under a slightly different spelling is the most common duplicate.
3. Create or update the CRM record with the plan, value, start date, the billing contact and the payment record's id, so the two can always be tied back together.
4. Assign an owner. A new account with nobody's name on it is an account nobody follows up. If the routing is not obvious, say so and ask rather than leaving it blank.
5. Do the setup the plan actually entitles them to and nothing beyond it: the workspace, the seats, the limits. Read the plan rather than copying the last customer's setup.
6. Announce it in one Slack message to the channel that tracks revenue: who, which plan, what they said they want to do, and who owns them.
7. Send the welcome yourself only if that is the agreed process. Otherwise hand the owner a draft with what you know: their stated use case, their contact, and the two things they will need first.
8. Set the check-in. A calendar item or a task for the owner at whatever interval the team uses. Onboarding that ends at the welcome email is how a first renewal gets missed.

Stop and ask

• When the plan on the payment record does not match what was sold — that is a conversation with whoever sold it, before any setup happens.
• Before granting anything above the plan: extra seats, higher limits, an unlisted feature.