Members across our groups identify growth as their top goal, and onboarding as the top obstacle to achieving that goal.
Many management companies we talk to say they are currently onboarding 1-2 communities a month, but need to increase that to 5-10 to hit their targets. One management company told us they are targeting 120 new communities a year.
To accomplish this, your management company needs to treat onboarding like a product, and with any product, the clients are the beating heart of its success.
It Starts With Expectations
The reality we see is that client retention is won or lost in the first 30 days. In this timeframe, the first action item your onboarding team should take is to get their hands on the salesperson’s notes as to why the board is switching management companies. This gives you the ability to set clear-eyed expectations with the board, the first critical step in avoiding downstream issues that can cause long-term unnecessary friction.
You need to give the board several items: upfront knowledge of what transfers fast, what takes time, what depends on the prior management company, and what requires their own action. The guiding principle that will always lead to successful onboarding: under-promise, operationally over-deliver.
To follow through on that goal, you need to include a written onboarding timeline with clear responsibilities for all three parties — the board, the outgoing company, and your company — in the sales proposal. Getting this done, as well as including realistic expectations around document transfer and financial cleanup, will give you something to point back to when things get bumpy.
Who Owns The Onboarding
The one thing that can complicate all of this? Not having clear alignment in your company on who owns onboarding. Onboarding ownership typically varies based on company size.
In small companies, it’s usually always the owner with a possible assistant. While this gives you high-quality control, it can quickly turn into a bottleneck.
Medium-sized companies will utilize their salesperson/BD person with admin support. As this is a hybrid role, they will need a clearly defined process.
And finally, for the large companies, a dedicated onboarding team is the norm. This becomes a necessity as volume continues to increase, as it has with one of our members who has already onboarded 50 new communities this year.
Tools and Systems
Having the right tools and systems is critical to successful onboarding. This, too, varies with volume.
For companies onboarding 1-2 communities a month, Word and Excel work fine. But if you plan to experience serious growth in 2026, the next step is to adopt Google Sheets, a tool that enables live collaboration, easy task assignment, and one tab per community.
Companies that have already established high growth usually use Monday.com or similar templated project plans and dashboards showing every community’s on-track/off-track status at a glance.
Some Final Tips:
1. Charge the onboarding fee, and defend it. The standard rate is one month or half a month’s management fee. Companies with a well-documented, demonstrably excellent onboarding process almost never negotiate it away. If you do waive it, add clear contract guardrails: the waiver is contingent on cooperation from the prior management company and clean financials.
2. Don’t forget the offboarding fee. Boards are generally receptive to it, and real work is involved in transitioning a community out. It’s an easy add to the agreement that protects your time on the back end.
3. Build feedback loops and keep improving. Even if your process feels solid, check in with the people executing it. What’s working, what isn’t — onboarding should always be getting better over time.
Your onboarding process isn’t just an operational checklist; it’s the foundation every long-term client relationship is built on. Getting it right is how growth stops being a goal and starts being a result.