The First 90 Days: An Offboarding Checklist for the Client You Just Won

Winning a new client often means taking over from a previous accountant. Here's how to run a clean transition so you don't inherit someone else's mess.

Most onboarding advice assumes you're starting from a blank page. In practice, you rarely are. When a business switches to your firm, they're leaving another accountant or bookkeeper — and that predecessor holds records, credentials, lodgment history and ATO relationships that you now need. Get the handover wrong and you'll spend the next twelve months untangling problems you didn't create.

This is the transition nobody plans for: not onboarding the client's data, but offboarding them from their old provider. Here's how to do it deliberately in the first 90 days.

Week 1: Secure the essentials before anything goes cold

The moment an engagement letter is signed, you're in a race against goodwill that fades. The outgoing accountant is professionally obliged to cooperate, but the smoother you make it, the faster you'll get what you need.

Send an ethical clearance letter (also called a professional clearance or handover letter) to the previous accountant straight away. Ask specifically for:

Prior-year financial statements and tax returns (at least the last two years)
Depreciation and asset schedules
Franking account and Division 7A loan balances where relevant
Trust distribution resolutions and any deeds
Correspondence with the ATO, including any active payment arrangements or deferrals
Working papers that support opening balances

Don't assume the client can hand you these. Half the time they can't find them, and the version they email you is out of date.

Week 1–2: Sort out the ATO relationship

Taking over agent-linked obligations is where transitions quietly go wrong. Two things matter here.

First, get yourself added as the tax and BAS agent in Online services for agents, and confirm the client uses the client-agent linking process where it applies. Until this is done, you can't see their lodgment status, and you're flying blind on what's actually outstanding.

Second — and this is the one that bites — reconcile what's genuinely overdue. New clients often arrive with a rosier picture of their compliance than reality. Pull the integrated client account and the lodgment history. You want to know about overdue BAS, unlodged returns, and any debt before you take responsibility, not three weeks later when you get a firm reminder from the ATO.

Log the obligations somewhere structured, not in your head

This is the point where a new client should stop being a loose collection of emails and become a tracked entity. In Finye, we'd set the client up with their ABN/ACN, entity type and roles, then create the recurring compliance jobs — BAS, IAS, income tax, any ASIC dates — so the obligations you just verified are sitting on a board with due dates rather than in someone's memory. If there's a lodgment deferral in place from the old accountant, that goes on the record too, so nobody assumes a deadline has passed when it's been legitimately extended.

Week 2–4: Take over the systems

Handover isn't just paper. It's access. Work through:

Xero (or the client's ledger): get transferred as the adviser, check the subscription status, and confirm who's paying for it. A surprising number of transitions stall because nobody agreed who owns the Xero subscription.
Bank feeds and integrations: confirm feeds are live and connected apps (payroll, POS, expense tools) are still authorised.
Payroll: if you're taking over STP reporting, check the last successful lodgment and the finalisation status for the year.
Document storage: where do the source documents live now, and where will they live under you?

As you connect Xero, resist the urge to bulk-import everything blindly. Map the client to the right record, check you're not creating a duplicate contact, and confirm the opening balances agree to the prior accountant's closing figures. Discrepancies here are your early warning that the previous file wasn't as clean as advertised.

Week 4–6: Validate, don't just trust

The temptation after a busy handover is to draw a line and start work. Don't — not before a short validation pass. Check that:

Opening balances match the last signed financials
The GST method and reporting cycle you've been told matches what's registered with the ATO
PAYG instalment rates and amounts are current
Any Division 7A loans have documented terms and the minimum repayments are accounted for
Superannuation obligations are up to date, not quietly in arrears

This is unglamorous work, but it's the difference between a client who thinks you're brilliant in year two and one who blames you for a problem that walked in the door with them.

Week 6–12: Set the working rhythm

By now the mechanics are done. The final third of the 90 days is about establishing how you'll actually work together, so the relationship doesn't drift back into the reactive, email-driven pattern that probably made them leave the last firm.

Confirm the scope in writing. Your engagement letter set it; now make sure the client understands what's in and out, especially advisory versus compliance.
Set up the request channel. Give them one place to send documents and questions rather than a personal inbox. A client portal or service desk means nothing gets lost and everyone can see where things stand.
Book the first proper conversation. Not a compliance chat — a genuine look at the business now that you can see the numbers. It shows you're paying attention, and it surfaces work the previous accountant never got to.

The point of doing this deliberately

A new client is at their most nervous in the first three months. They've just made a decision to leave someone, and they're watching to see whether it was the right call. A clean, visible transition — where obligations are tracked, access is sorted, and nothing falls through the gap between the old firm and yours — is the single best way to convert a cautious new client into a loyal one.

Build a standard 90-day transition checklist once, turn it into a repeatable job template, and every future takeover becomes calmer, faster and far less likely to leave you holding a problem you didn't make.