A store onboarding checklist covers three phases: accounts and access created before day one, a first shift with one room and one named buddy, and a first fortnight with specific things to learn. For anyone temporary or contracted, the access end date is set during the before-day-one phase, not decided later, which is the single change that makes offboarding routine.
When to use it
Use it for every hire including seasonal and contract. The temporary ones benefit most, because they arrive during your busiest weeks when nobody has time to improvise.
The before-day-one column is the one that gets skipped, and skipping it costs the new person most of their first day. Accounts that do not exist yet, a login nobody can find, no idea who to ask: all of that is preventable the week before at almost no cost.
The template
Three columns because they happen at different times and are usually done by different people.
ONBOARDING: [name] Start date: [date] Role: [role] Type: [permanent / seasonal / contract] Owner of this checklist: [name] BEFORE DAY ONE [ ] Shopify staff account created, permissions scoped to the role [ ] Store Huddle role assigned: [Manager / Staff / Fulfillment / VA / Developer] [ ] Added to the rooms for their role, and no others [ ] END DATE set: [date] (required for seasonal and contract) [ ] Buddy named: [name] [ ] First-shift plan exists and the buddy knows they are doing it [ ] Equipment / login details ready to hand over in person FIRST SHIFT [ ] Buddy present for the whole shift [ ] One room only. Do not add them to everything on day one. [ ] Shown: where the queue is, what "done" looks like, who to ask [ ] Told explicitly what they may decide alone, and the value limit [ ] Told what to do when they are stuck, by name FIRST TWO WEEKS [ ] Second room added, once the first is comfortable [ ] Shown the exceptions, not just the happy path [ ] Has completed one full [task type] unsupervised [ ] 15-minute check-in at end of week one [ ] Asked: what was confusing that nobody warned you about? FOR SEASONAL AND CONTRACT [ ] End date in the calendar, owned by [name] [ ] Access removal is a scheduled task, not a memory
How to adapt it
- Keep the end date in the before-day-one block. Set at grant time it is a diary entry; decided later it is a judgement call somebody has to remember.
- One room on day one. A new starter dropped into the full workspace reads none of it and learns to ignore all of it.
- Keep the last question. New starters see your process without the assumptions and describe it more accurately than anyone who has been there two years.
- Name the buddy, do not assume one. An unnamed buddy is everybody, which is nobody.
Why it is this short
Onboarding checklists fail by being aspirational. A forty-item list written calmly in January does not get followed in November when the person actually starts.
Everything here is either genuinely necessary or cheap. The before-day-one column in particular takes about twenty minutes and saves most of a working day.
Common questions
What should happen before a new starter's first day?
Accounts created with scoped permissions, workspace role assigned, added only to the rooms their role needs, a named buddy, and for temporary staff an end date set that same day.
Should a new starter see the whole workspace on day one?
No. One room. Dropped into everything they read none of it, and the habit of ignoring the workspace is hard to reverse later.
What is the most commonly skipped step?
The end date for seasonal and contract hires. It is known on day one and almost never recorded, which is why access outlives the engagement.