Generic MSP Onboarding Checklist: What Any Provider Should Document
A managed IT onboarding checklist covering discovery, documentation, tooling, security baselines, and handover.
Direct answer
A proper MSP onboarding should document the environment before active management begins. That includes users, devices, servers, network equipment, cloud tenants, licenses, backups, security policies, admin access, known risks, and escalation paths.
Discovery
Inventory users, devices, servers, network equipment, SaaS apps, cloud tenants, and vendors.
Security baseline
Confirm MFA, admin accounts, endpoint protection, patching, backups, email security, and conditional access.
Tooling deployment
Roll out RMM, EDR, backup agents, ticketing, documentation, and monitoring alerts.
Runbook creation
Document onboarding, offboarding, incident escalation, backup restore, and vendor procedures.
Handover
Review support channels, SLAs, reporting cadence, emergency contacts, and first-month priorities.
For standard 20-200 user environments
Every managed device and service accounted for
Known risks tracked from the start
Questions buyers ask
Should onboarding be billed separately?
Sometimes. If the environment needs heavy cleanup, migration, or tool deployment, onboarding may be a separate fixed project. The scope should be clear before work begins.
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