How to Save Time on Client Onboarding for Dev Agencies: Work Smarter


Your team is ready to code. The kickoff meeting is done. But instead of diving into the work, you’re stuck chasing client inputs, reviewing scattered feedback, and trying to locate the latest version of the scope document.

Sound familiar?

For most dev agencies, client onboarding eats 4+ hours every week—per project. That’s time your senior team could be using to build, pitch, or ship. Instead, it’s being lost to duplicated effort and process gaps.

Multiply that across multiple clients, and the impact becomes clear:
Reduced billable hours. Delayed starts. Slower revenue growth.

As one agency lead put it: “We spend more time onboarding clients than building for them.”

What’s Really Holding Back Onboarding?

It’s not your team. It’s not the clients. It’s the process.

Most onboarding workflows evolve reactively—one client at a time. They’re cobbled together from emails, shared folders, meetings, and whatever templates the team used last time. That might work for one or two clients. But as soon as you’re handling multiple projects at once, the cracks show:

  • Specs come in late, incomplete, or in the wrong format

  • Important decisions get buried in email threads

  • Internal teams waste time searching for the latest version of the brief

  • Client reviews get dragged out because there’s no clear feedback flow

The result: project timelines stretch, your developers wait, and revenue stalls.

The Opportunity: Fix Onboarding with Smart Automation

You don’t need more tools. You need less manual effort and fewer moving parts.
The most efficient dev agencies are now rethinking onboarding—not as a series of meetings, but as a structured intake process that runs itself.

Here’s how they do it:

1. Automate Brief Collection

Instead of back-and-forth emails asking for specs, timelines, and goals, use secure forms to collect everything up front.

Ask: “What platforms do you need? What third-party tools should be integrated? Who’s approving designs?”

PaperFlow’s templates guide clients through the briefing process in a way that’s easy for them—and actionable for your team. It often saves 3+ hours per week per project.

2. Streamline Review and Sign-Off

Once the initial brief is in, getting clarity shouldn’t involve 20 email replies and a confusing comment thread.

With PaperFlow’s feedback forms, you can share client submissions, ask targeted follow-up questions, and track revisions—all in one place. That means less chaos, fewer missed details, and faster approvals.

3. Centralize Documentation

How much time does your team lose just looking for “the latest version”? With PaperFlow, every brief, update, and file lives in one secure cloud hub—accessible anytime by anyone on the project.

This means developers don’t have to ask the project manager for the brief. And the PM doesn’t have to ask the client to resend it.

Why It Matters

Time wasted on onboarding isn’t just time lost—it’s revenue left on the table.
Every hour your developers spend chasing specs is an hour they’re not building. Every week onboarding drags is a week a new project can’t start.

Better onboarding means:

  • Faster project starts

  • More capacity for new work

  • More accurate scoping and pricing

  • A smoother client experience

And over a year, that means $10,000+ in recovered billable hours—even for small teams.

Start Saving Time on Client Onboarding

If you’re ready to tighten your onboarding workflow, PaperFlow gives you the forms, templates, and automation to do it right.

👉 Start your free trial — no credit card needed.

  • Set up in 5 minutes

  • Fully secure

  • Built for dev agencies

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