Most coaches know what onboarding should contain. What goes wrong is order and ownership: the waiver gets signed in week two, nobody confirms the client actually got into the app, and the program you wrote assumes a cable machine they do not have. This is the list to work through, in sequence, with the owner and the timing for each item.
The reasoning behind the sequence — why the first fortnight carries so much weight, why the intake is split in two — is in how to onboard online coaching clients. This page is the artefact. Copy it, delete what does not apply to how you coach, and run the same version for every client.
Owner is you, the client, or automated — meaning the platform does it without you touching it. When is relative to the day payment clears, which is day 0.
Before they say yes
Four things belong on the sales call, not after it. Each one is cheap to ask then and expensive to discover later.
| Item | Owner | When | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirm the goal is one you actually coach | You | On the call | You spend three months out of your depth and refund at the end of it |
| Screen for injuries, medications, pregnancy and anything needing GP clearance | You | Before you take money | You take on a client you should have referred |
| Ask where they train and what equipment they have | You | On the call | Every program you write for the first month gets rebuilt |
| Say the price, the term, the notice period and what happens at the end | You | On the call | A cancellation argument in month two |
| Send the agreement and waiver | You, then client | Before the first payment | An unsigned waiver, which is the one item with legal consequences |
The agreement and the waiver are separate documents doing separate jobs — payment terms and notice in the coaching agreement, risk and medical disclosure in the liability waiver. Send both as one link so the client signs once.
The moment they pay
This block takes about ten minutes and it all happens on the same day. The point is that the client receives something within the hour, not that everything is finished.
| Item | Owner | When | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create the account and send the invite | You or automated | Within an hour of payment | The client's first experience of coaching is silence |
| Send a short message saying what happens next and when | You | Same hour | They fill the gap themselves, usually with doubt |
| Send the short intake — injuries, schedule, equipment, goal in their words | You or automated | Same hour | You cannot write week one |
| Apply the onboarding flow, welcome pack and starting habits | Automated | Same hour | You assemble the same bundle by hand for every client |
| Diarise the day 1 activation check and the day 14 review | You | Same hour | Both get skipped, which is covered below |
Keep the first form to the six answers that change what you write this week. The long version — photos, measurements, food detail, lifestyle — is a week two job. What to ask on a coaching intake form splits the question set into the two halves.
If clients buy through a checkout page rather than a sales call, the "before they say yes" block has nowhere to live, so it moves here and gets tighter: the agreement and waiver have to be part of checkout or the first thing that lands afterwards, and the medical screen becomes the first section of the intake form with a clear instruction to stop and speak to you if anything is flagged. Decide which of the two routes each client came in through before you start ticking, because the ordering is genuinely different.
Day one
Everything here is verification. You are checking that what you sent on day 0 arrived and worked.
| Item | Owner | When | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirm the account is activated, not just invited | You | Day 1 | A client stuck at the invite email who will never tell you |
| If it is not, resend the invite or send the link directly | You | Day 1 | You spend a fortnight thinking they are training |
| Confirm the intake came back; chase once if not | You | Day 1 | Day 2 has nothing to program from |
| Reply to the intake naming their first session and the fortnight's target | You | Day 1 | The client has no idea what success looks like yet |
| Send the welcome pack — response times, check-in day, what to do when they miss a session | You or automated | Day 1 | Every expectation gets set by accident later |
The welcome pack is where your working rules live, and it is the one day-one document worth templating properly. What to put in a coaching welcome packet covers what belongs in it.
Days two to seven
The client trains in this block. Nothing else in the checklist matters if this part does not happen.
| Item | Owner | When | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| First session available — starter block or assessment is fine | You | By day 2 | The client waits, and the willingness they paid with drains |
| Cross-check the written program against their equipment answers | You | Before you assign it | Session one contains a machine they do not have, and they improvise or quit |
| Confirm one thing has been logged in the app | You | Day 3 | You cannot tell a login problem from a motivation problem |
| Full program assigned | You | Day 4–5 | Week two runs on a placeholder |
| One specific comment on something only that client did | You | Day 6–7 | Coaching that reads as automated, because so far it was |
| First check-in, deliberately short | Client | Day 7 | The weekly rhythm never starts |
Day fourteen
The diarised review. Four checks, about ninety seconds per client, and a decision at the end of it.
| Item | Owner | When | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sessions logged, not sessions assigned | You | Day 14 | The clearest early warning there is goes unread |
| First check-in submitted, with real sentences in it | You | Day 14 | One-word answers become the norm |
| Messages replied to | You | Day 14 | A client already drifting stays invisible until week six |
| The early win named and confirmed out loud | You | Day 14 | They have no evidence the money is working |
| Collect the deferred intake — photos, measurements, food detail | Client | Day 8–14 | You have no baseline to report against at day 30 |
If two or more of the first four are wrong, have the conversation that day rather than at the next scheduled check-in.
Day thirty
Onboarding ends here, and month two is a different job. Five items close it out.
| Item | Owner | When | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| First progress report against the day 0 baseline | You | Day 30 | The client judges a month of work on how they feel that morning |
| Confirm the renewal actually charged | You or automated | Renewal date | You coach an unpaid month and find out in week seven |
| One programming change that visibly responds to their data | You | Day 30 | The program reads as a template that never moves |
| Ask what has been working and what has not | You | Day 30 | You hear about the problem at cancellation |
| Decide: on track, or rebuild the schedule | You | Day 30 | A client on the wrong plan stays on it |
A month-one report does not need to be long or show dramatic change; it needs to show the numbers you agreed to track, next to where they started. The client progress report template has a format that takes a few minutes to fill in.
The three items that get skipped
Three rows above are skipped far more than the rest, and all three fail quietly.
Confirming the client can get into the app. Invites land in spam, clients set a password on the web and never install the app, and single-use links error on the second try. None of those clients report the problem. They assume the fault is theirs and wait.
Cross-checking equipment against the program. You asked on the sales call, then wrote the program a week later from memory. Two minutes re-reading their answer before you assign is the whole fix.
Diarising day 14. It is the only item with no trigger — no payment, no form, no notification prompts it. If it is not in the calendar on day 0, it does not happen.
When an item stalls
Half the value of a checklist is knowing what to do when a line will not tick. Three items stall often enough to need a standing answer, so decide it once rather than per client.
The intake has not come back by day 2. Do not resend the same link with "just following up". Send the three questions you need most — injuries, training days, equipment — in the chat message itself, and let them answer in a sentence. You can collect the rest in week two. A form that has not been returned in 48 hours usually will not be returned at all, and the answers matter more than the format they arrive in.
The account is still not activated by day 3. Stop emailing and call or voice-note them. At this point the problem is almost always mechanical — the invite went to spam, they set a password on the web and never installed the app, or they are trying to sign up in the app instead of signing in. Two minutes on the phone fixes what a fourth email will not.
Zero sessions logged by day 7. Ask about the schedule, not the effort. "Is five days actually realistic this month, or should I rebuild this around three?" gives them a change to accept instead of a failure to admit. Rebuild it the same day, because the offer only works if something visibly changes.
The common thread is that a stalled item is information, not a client being difficult. Every one of these is easier to fix in the first week than in the sixth, which is the entire argument for running the checks on a date rather than when something feels off.
What to automate and what to keep
Roughly half this checklist is content delivery, and content delivery is what automation is for. In Fitsly, an onboarding flow bundles the program, check-in forms, one-time forms, habits and vault content, and assigns the lot the moment the client activates their account or completes checkout on a package — so day 0 arrives complete without you assembling it per client.
| Onboarding item | Automate it |
|---|---|
| Invite, welcome pack, intake form, starting program and habits | Yes — same for every client |
| Scheduled reminders and the recurring check-in | Yes |
| Reading the intake and writing week one | No |
| The equipment cross-check | No |
| The day 1 activation check | Partly — most platforms flag activation, but you still have to look |
| The day 14 review and the conversation after it | No |
The line worth drawing: automating the welcome message is fine, and automating the first real conversation is not. A templated "welcome aboard, here is how check-ins work" loses nothing by being scheduled, because it says the same thing to everyone and the client knows it. A reply to their intake that names their shoulder, their four available evenings and the sentence they wrote about why they are doing this cannot be templated without the client noticing — and the noticing is worse than never sending it.
The test for any item: would the client be able to tell it was automated, and would they mind? If the answer to both is yes, keep it.
