Client Onboarding — Signature to Kickoff without Chasing

Between yes and the work starting, someone chases a signature, a deposit, an intake form, a folder, a kickoff call and a welcome email.

It is the least skilled work in the business, and it is done by the most expensive person in it — because they are the one who noticed it was stuck.

Every node with its icon, as on the n8n canvasstarts a runHover a node for its name and type

• 01Proposal Accepted to Contract

  12 nodes · 11 connections · 2 notes

  the real deal values, a send-once guard

• 02Signature to Payment Link

  14 nodes · 13 connections · 2 notes

  a signed webhook, the deposit link

• 03Payment to Provisioning

  20 nodes · 19 connections · 3 notes

  the event-ID claim, then everything

• 04Intake Chaser

  11 nodes · 13 connections · 2 notes

  the stop first, then the ladder

• 05Status Record

  11 nodes · 9 connections · 2 notes

  credit per section, a patience budget per stage

The gates, 11 If nodes, decide whether anything happens next: a countable part of the system, not a claim about it. The 11 sticky notes carry the reasoning on the canvas, at the point it applies.

HoverTap a card to read what it prevents.

• The event ID is claimed before provisioning

  The event ID is claimed before provisioning

  Stripe retries, and can deliver the same event twice when nothing is wrong. Without the claim, a client’s first impression is two folders, two channels and two welcome emails.

• Signatures that survive key rotation

  Signatures that survive key rotation

  During a rotation Stripe sends more than one signature; any match is accepted, inside a five-minute window, and a missing secret fails closed.

• The contract is built from the deal

  The contract is built from the deal

  The figure the client signs and the figure they are billed are the same figure by construction. A deal with no amount throws rather than produce a contract for zero.

• Signature and payment are separate

  Signature and payment are separate

  They are separate events, minutes or days apart. A client who signs and never pays should not have a folder, a channel and a kickoff invite waiting.

• The stop is computed before the ladder

  The stop is computed before the ladder

  Suppression is not a filter further down that someone can reorder: every section answered means the record exits.

• Only the missing sections are named

  Only the missing sections are named

  Someone who filled in three of four and gets the whole form again reads it as “you did not notice”.

• Built, not yet deployed. Every file imports cleanly; no real signature and payment has flowed through it.
• The e-signature vendor is PandaDoc. DocuSign means rewriting the first two workflows.
• The event-ID claim is as atomic as a Google Sheet allows. On a busy account it belongs in PostgreSQL with a unique constraint — a one-node swap.
• There is no refund or chargeback path yet: a refunded payment changes nothing.