Manual client onboarding burns time. You send a welcome email, follow up when they don't respond, chase signatures, remind them about invoices, and flag things for manual review—all outside your CRM. By the time a client is actually productive, you've spent hours on logistics that should have been automatic. Orin's forms, automations , and task system turn that chaos into a repeatable workflow. A prospect fills out a form. Orin creates their contact, generates an invoice, sends a portal link, and flags incomplete documents for your team. No email sequences. No manual touches until they're actually needed. Why email-based onboarding fails Email welcome sequences feel like automation—they send on a schedule, they feel organized—but they're brittle: No visibility. Emails disappear into inboxes. You don't know if a client received a portal link, opened it, or uploaded documents until you manually check. No context. Each email stands alone. If a client replies to one message and ignores another, your team has to piece together what they've actually done. No accountability. Tasks live in someone's head or scattered across Slack. When Sarah's on vacation, nobody knows which documents are still pending. Duplicated work. You create a contact manually, send an email, then re-enter their information when they return documents. The same data is entered three times. A structured CRM workflow solves all of these. Everything is visible, timestamped, and assigned. The four-stage onboarding workflow Stage 1: Intake form captures structured data Instead of sending a welcome email with a link to a Google Form somewhere, embed an Orin intake form on your website or send it via WhatsApp. When someone submits it, Orin does the work: Creates a new contact record with all their details (name, email, phone, company, project scope) Populates a deal with the project or service type Tags them with a status like 'Onboarding In Progress' Triggers the next automation step immediately No manual contact entry. No separate CRM admin step. The form submission is the contact creation. Example: A marketing agency's intake form asks: What services do you need? What's your monthly budget? What's your timeline? Orin captures those answers, creates the contact, and tags them by service type so your team knows who handles retainers vs. one-off projects. Stage 2: Auto-create invoice and send portal link Once the contact exists, an automation creates a draft invoice and sends them a personalized portal link via email or WhatsApp . The client sees: Their invoice with payment terms A portal link where they can upload required documents (tax ID, proof of address, company registration, etc.) A clear description of what happens next A deadline (optional, but effective) The portal is part of Orin. There's no third-party tool. There's no account creation friction. They click, they upload, Orin tracks what they've submitted. Why this matters: Clients often don't know what documents you need. A portal with a checklist cuts back-and-forth email by 70%. They see what's missing immediately and upload it in one session. Stage 3: Track document completion and auto-flag gaps As documents are uploaded to the portal, Orin creates a timeline in the contact record. Your team can see: Invoice status (unpaid, partially paid, paid) Which documents have been uploaded and when Which documents are still missing Last activity date (so you know if they've abandoned the form) You can set up automations to flag a task the moment certain documents are missing after 5 days, or when the invoice is 10 days overdue. Instead of manually checking 30 client records, your team sees a list of exceptions. Pro tip: Use Orin's conditional automations. If invoice status = unpaid AND documents uploaded = false, send a friendly reminder that kicks off the process. If documents uploaded = true AND invoice paid = false, send a different message focused on payment, not document collection. Stage 4: Manual review and project kickoff Not everything should be automated. Once documents are uploaded and payment is confirmed, a task is created and assigned to the project lead or account manager. The task includes: The client's profile and contact details Links to all uploaded documents A summary of what was agreed (pulled from the intake form) The invoice and payment confirmation Your team reviews it in one place, then moves the deal to 'Active' and onboards the client manually—calls, credential setup, first deliverable—whatever your process is. By this point, all friction is gone. You're just executing. How to set this up in Orin 1. Create the intake form Design a form with fields that match your onboarding checklist: Name, email, phone Company / organization Project description or service type Timeline or urgency Budget or scope (if relevant) Set the form to create a contact on submission. This single setting saves hours of copy-paste. 2. Build the first automation Trigger: Form submitted Actions: Cre