From 5 Days to 15 Minutes: Automating Client Onboarding with Zero Manual Work

Be Known needed to onboard new clients faster and more reliably. Their existing process was fragmented, relying on forms, spreadsheets, documents, manual calendar updates, and follow-up emails across multiple tools. This led to inconsistent execution and hours of repetitive work for every new client.

We built an end-to-end onboarding automation system using Make.com, triggered by a single JotForm submission. The system connects to their CRM (GoHighLevel), accounting tool (QuickBooks), project management platform (ClickUp), and Google Workspace — automating every onboarding step: creating client records, sending welcome messages, generating folders and documents, setting calendar reminders, and flagging errors via Slack.

The result? A fully onboarded client in under 15 minutes, with zero manual input.

Be Known needed a way to onboard clients faster, with less back-and-forth and more consistency. The team used forms, documents, checklists, and calendar events, but relied heavily on manual work to make everything run, making it both inefficient and difficult to scale.

Each new client required over 6 hours of hands-on work, with team members inputting data across more than 5 different tools and with back-and-forth communications it was taking up to 2 weeks to onboard new client. This not only slowed things down, but also made growth expensive, as scaling meant directly increasing headcount or workload.

Pain Points

• Every client needed 4h of manual onboarding work
• Data from intake forms mismatched across systems
• No reminders for post-onboarding actions 
• Inconsistent folder/document management
• A growing client base made the process increasingly unsustainable

We developed a fully-automated onboarding pipeline using Make.com, built around JotForm submissions. The automation integrates with 7 platforms and is designed to be modular, reliable, and scalable — once a client submits the form, a series of automated actions create profiles, folders, metrics trackers, calendar events, and send notifications — all within minutes. It automates everything from CRM creation to document generation and ensures error handling with Slack alerts and fallback logic.

The system cut onboarding time from 2 weeks to under 15 minutes, eliminated manual errors, and gave the team full visibility into failures. It made scaling possible without adding headcount or sacrificing consistency, allowing Be Known to adjust as their processes evolve.

Strategic Highlights:

• Eliminates repetitive tasks
• Centralized data and documents
• Event reminders improve long-term client experience
• Unified data flow between key business tools
• Integrated Slack bot monitors flow for errors and flags unusual behavior
• Onboarding forms now match internal structures and automations
• Admin-friendly fallback flows for data that can’t be processed automatically
• Removed Zapier dependency and consolidated everything in Make

This automation completely changed how the company welcomes new clients. What used to be a stressful process now happens smoothly in the background. Team members got back hours of their week previously spent doing repetitive paperwork. Clients receive everything they need right away without delays or mistakes.

The system handles everything automatically, freeing up 40+ hours/month for the team, allowing them to focus on high-value client relationships instead of repetitive data entry. The system allows for scaling effortlessly, handling 10+ new clients/month without additional overhead, setting the stage for sustainable growth.