Post-Purchase Onboarding

A sale is the start of the relationship, not the end of the transaction. When someone buys a plan publicly, ClientCove can register them as a client, set up their account, and walk them straight into a custom intake form — all on its own, the moment payment clears.

What It Does

Connect any product or plan to an intake form. From then on, a purchase of that item:

1. Creates the client — a brand-new buyer finishes their account and enters their company name on the thank-you page; that becomes their client record automatically.
2. Sends a customizable email — a welcome that carries them to the intake.
3. Starts the intake — the buyer lands in your onboarding form to tell you what you need to begin.

Nothing here fires until you connect a product to an intake. Products with no onboarding intake behave exactly as they did before.

Setting It Up

Four steps take you from nothing to a live, self-running onboarding. Do them in order — each one builds on the last.

Step 1: Build the Intake Form

The onboarding uses one of your intake forms — the same forms you already use to collect information from clients. Build the one you want new buyers of this product to complete.

1. Go to Intake and create a new form (or pick an existing one to reuse).
2. Add the questions you need to start the work — brand details, logins, goals, whatever this particular product requires.
3. Save it.

That's all onboarding needs from the form. It uses your intake exactly as it stands — there's no special "onboarding mode" to switch on, and nothing about the form changes because it's used for onboarding. If you're new to intake forms, see the intake documentation for form building.

Step 2: Connect the Product to the Intake

This is the switch that turns onboarding on for a product. Open the item and point it at the form from Step 1.

1. Go to the Items Manager and edit the product or plan you want to onboard.
2. Find the Onboarding Intake field and choose your intake form.
3. Save the item.

Field	What it does
Onboarding Intake	The intake form a buyer is invited to complete. Empty = no onboarding for this item.
Onboarding Email Template	Which Email Designer template carries the invitation. Empty = the default Onboarding template (Step 3).

That single connection is what makes everything else run. A plan and a product can each point at a different intake, or several items can share one — a buyer who purchases two items sharing an intake is asked for it once.

Step 3: Customize the Onboarding Email

A new Onboarding template ships in the Email Designer, styled like your other transactional emails and ready to send as-is. This step is optional — if you skip it, buyers get the default template, which already works.

To make it yours:

1. Go to the Email Designer and open the Onboarding template.
2. Edit the branding, wording, and the button label to match your voice.
3. Save.

The template's variables fill in per buyer:

• {{recipient_name}} — the buyer
• {{item_name}} — what they purchased
• {{intake_title}} — the onboarding form's name
• {{intake_url}} — the link to start it

Want different wording per plan? Duplicate the template in the Email Designer, edit the copy, and point that product's Onboarding Email Template field (Step 2) at your copy. Otherwise every onboarding email uses the one default.

Step 4: Enable Public Purchasing

Onboarding shines for public buyers — strangers who purchase without an account and get registered on the spot. For that to be possible, the item has to be buyable by the public, which takes two things (both also covered in Selling Plans & Products):

1. Turn on the item's Show on public services page switch. It's off by default, so nothing sells publicly until you say so. Edit the item in the Items Manager and enable it.
2. Create a Guest Checkout page. Go to Pages → new, and in the page's Template dropdown choose Guest Checkout, then publish. This is the page that actually takes payment from a logged-out visitor. Without it, a plan's buy button sends visitors to the login screen instead of a checkout.

Onboarding also runs for a logged-in client who buys — they skip registration but still get the email and the intake. Step 4 is only about opening the door to the public; if you're onboarding existing clients only, Steps 1–3 are enough.

Test the Whole Flow

Before you point real buyers at it, rehearse the purchase once with Stripe in test mode (test keys and a test card — see Connecting Stripe). A single test purchase confirms all four steps are wired:

• The buy button opens a checkout (not the login page) → Step 4 is right.
• The thank-you page asks for a password and company name → registration is working.
• The onboarding email arrives → Steps 2 and 3 are connected.
• Submitting the intake flips the order's onboarding to complete → the loop closes (see Tracking Status).

Can the Assistant Set This Up?

Yes — the whole setup, end to end. You can build the onboarding by asking the ClientCove assistant (or any connected MCP client), without opening the admin screens yourself.

• Build the intake form — create_intake makes a complete form from a title and a list of questions, or from one of the built-in starters (client, resource, asset, location). Questions use plain types — short text, paragraph, multiple choice, yes/no, image, file, address. The form is created as a draft and opens in the studio for you to review.
• Create the product or plan — create_product builds the sellable item, sets its price and interval, and can flip it public.
• Connect the two — create_product and update_product both take an onboarding intake and an onboarding email template, so the assistant can wire Step 2 — the switch that turns onboarding on — in the same breath.
• Create the onboarding email — the email-template tools add and edit an Email Designer template.

So a single request like "create an onboarding intake for my Starter plan and connect it" can do all of Steps 1–3.

What the Buyer Experiences

For a new customer buying publicly:

1. They pay on the public checkout page.
2. The thank-you page invites them to finish setting up — a password and their company name, nothing more. Everything else about their project belongs in your intake, which is yours to design.
3. Submitting that creates their client record, signs them in, and drops them into the onboarding intake.
4. The onboarding email arrives as well, with a Start onboarding button — so a buyer who closed the tab still has a way in.

The finish-setup link in that email is single-use and personal to the buyer. Once they complete setup, it stops working and simply points at the login page.

Returning Customers

A customer who already has an account and a company is recognized. They aren't asked to set up anything again, their purchase attaches to their existing client, and they receive the onboarding email with the Start onboarding button. No duplicate client records, no re-registration.

One client per customer is unchanged: ClientCove doesn't ask an existing customer to choose between companies, because a customer belongs to one client.

Tracking Status

Every order shows its onboarding at a glance — which intakes were sent and which are complete — in two places:

• On the order in your portal (staff view).
• On the order's admin screen, in an Onboarding panel.

When the buyer submits the intake, the matching entry flips from sent to complete on its own.

Automating Around It

A new automation trigger, An order is completed (purchase), is available in the Automations builder. Build your own follow-ups on top of any purchase — assign an onboarding task to a team member, notify the account manager, whatever your process needs. The trigger carries the order, the buyer, the purchased items, and the client, so your conditions and actions have what they need.

Security & Privacy

The onboarding flow is built for the public, so its boundaries matter:

• The finish-setup link is a single-use credential, tied to the exact checkout that created the account. It reaches only the buyer, is consumed the moment setup completes, and never appears anywhere it shouldn't.
• The thank-you page reveals nothing to a stranger. Someone who merely typed an email — without completing the checkout that made the account — is never handed account details or a setup link. Existing-account purchases are told, generically, to check their email.
• Purchases are never at risk from onboarding. The order and access are finalized before any onboarding runs, so a hiccup in the follow-up can't undo the sale.