Employee onboarding software
- Checklist items
- 37
- Items due before or on day one
- 17
- Items due in the first 30 days
- 20
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs you enter, by the method stated below it. The only constants HeadcountDesk supplies are the published federal payroll tax rates and the overtime multiplier, each cited where it is used. The defaults are a worked example to replace with your own.
Onboarding software for a small employer is not a learning management system with a video library. It is the set of things that have to exist before a new person starts and in their first month: the signed handbook acknowledgement, the contract, the tax and eligibility forms, the equipment and the logins, a named person to ask, and a date when probation ends. The valuable feature is not the welcome video, it is the checklist that says which of those is still missing and who owns it.
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Start from the paperwork, not the welcome
The handbook acknowledgement, the signed contract, the W-4, the I-9 and the direct deposit form are the items with a legal clock on them. Everything else on the list can slip a week; those cannot. A checklist that puts them first, with a due date before day one, is doing the job a generic onboarding portal does not.
Issue access as a list, not a memory
Laptop, badge, phone, email, the shared drive, the timesheet login, the payroll portal: the new person discovers what is missing by needing it, usually in front of a customer. Listing every item to issue, with a name against each, is the whole difference between a first day and a first week of asking.
Put probation on the calendar on day one
An introductory period only means anything if someone reviews it before it ends. Recording the probation end date against the hire when the checklist is created, and reminding the manager two weeks before it, is what turns a ninety-day period into a decision rather than a date that passed.
Employee onboarding software: common questions
Is there free employee onboarding software?
The onboarding checklist on this site scopes the hire for free with no account: how many items, how many hours of manager time, what that time costs. What HeadcountDesk Pro adds is the record: the checklist saved against the employee, reminders to the people who still have to sign, and the handbook and contract filed next to it.
How long should onboarding take?
The paperwork should be complete before or on day one. The checklist itself runs to the end of the first month, and the introductory period runs longer. The tool splits the items into what is due by day one and what is due in the first thirty days, because those two lists have different owners.
Do I need onboarding software with five employees?
You need the list. Five people can be onboarded from a printed checklist, and many good businesses do exactly that. The software earns its place when the sixth hire is onboarded by a different manager than the fifth, and the list has to be the same both times.
Will it do what you need for Employee onboarding software?
Tell us what your business needs and we will tell you straight whether HeadcountDesk Pro does it today, whether it is coming, or whether you are better off with something else. A person reads these and replies.