CHECKLIST
New Client Onboarding Checklist
About thirty minutes, almost all of it before you send a price. A new client is the only moment you have leverage. After the first invoice you are asking for a favour, and everything on this list is harder to ask for once the work has started.
- Five sections, twenty checks, thirty minutes
- The client size question that decides who carries your IR35 risk
- Four warning signs worth walking away from
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Who this checklist is for
Freelancers, contractors and consultants taking on a new client who want scope, rate, terms and status agreed while those things are still negotiable, rather than discovered in month three.
You quoted before you knew what the work was
A scope you can point at later is worth more than an hour of goodwill when the fourth revision arrives. Two rounds of revisions is normal. Unlimited revisions turn a fixed price into a variable cost, which is not a price at all, and the ceiling only becomes visible once you have passed it.
You do not know how big your client is
It decides who determines your IR35 status and who carries the liability if the determination is wrong. If the client is small, that is your company on both counts. Most freelancers never ask, and the answer takes one question at the point where asking it is still normal.
Your payment terms were told to you, not agreed with you
Thirty days is standard and anything longer is a loan you are making, so it belongs in the price. The person briefing you is often not the person paying you, and that gap is where sixty day payments come from. Ask who signs off the invoice before you send the first one.
FACTS
Why the client size question is on a freelance checklist
From 6 April 2025 a private sector client is small if it meets two of three: turnover not more than £15 million, balance sheet not more than £7.5 million, and not more than 50 employees. Clients that were medium in 2024 may be small now, which moves the determination, and the liability, back to your own company without anyone telling you.
20 checks
Five sections
30 minutes
Almost all before you quote
FACTS
What a late payment clause actually does
Write nothing and you are entitled to statutory interest at base plus eight per cent, plus a fixed sum of £40, £70 or £100 by invoice size. Write a clause with a lower rate and it replaces that right rather than adding to it. A badly drafted clause leaves you worse off than no clause at all.