A signed offer is not a hire. A first day is.
The four to eight weeks between someone accepting and someone arriving belong to nobody — recruiting has closed the role, HR hasn’t opened the record. Pre-Onboarding owns that gap: a checklist per hire, the milestones through the first ninety days, a clear signal when something is slipping, and a one-click handover to Tanca HRM on day one.
- No credit card
- No per-hire cost
- Works without Tanca HRM
The most expensive candidate is the one who accepts and doesn’t arrive.
By the time someone signs, you’ve spent the whole cost of the hire — the posting, the screening hours, the interview slots, the negotiation. None of it is recoverable if they don’t turn up, and you restart from an empty pipeline with a team that’s already been short-staffed for two months.
It happens for a boring reason. Recruiting closes the role at the signature. HR opens the record on day one. For the six weeks in between, nobody is responsible, and the person who was excited on the phone hears nothing at all.
Meanwhile their other conversations are still open, and the company that stays in touch is the one they show up for.
All of it. There’s no allowance on this one.
Nothing in this module consumes AI time, so nothing in it is metered.
And it works whether or not you use Tanca HRM. The handover is one click if you do; if you don’t, export the record and the checklist stays complete either way.
A board, a checklist, and a set of dates.
Small on purpose. A pre-onboarding tool that needs training is a pre-onboarding tool nobody opens.
Everyone who hasn’t started yet
One row per person, sorted by how soon they arrive, with readiness computed against that date.
One person’s checklist
Everything that has to happen before they arrive, who owns each item, and what’s already done.
Checklist templates
Build the list once per role. Frontline hires and office hires don’t need the same paperwork.
The checklist isn’t paperwork. It’s the excuse to talk to them.
A document request, an equipment question, a note about where to park on the first morning — each of those is an administrative item, and each of them is also a message from a company that hasn’t forgotten someone exists.
That matters more than it sounds. A person who signed six weeks ago and has heard nothing is a person quietly wondering whether they made a mistake, while a competitor is still calling them.
None of this requires a warmth program or a culture initiative. It requires somebody to send four messages over six weeks, and a system that says who and when.
- Offer confirmed12/08
- Documents requested20/0812 days with no contact
- Equipment confirmed02/09
- First-day details12/09
Two of five done isn’t a problem. It depends entirely on when they start.
Most trackers color a progress bar by the percentage, which means a hire who is 40% complete with two months to go looks like an emergency, and a hire who is 80% complete with two days to go looks fine. Both readings are wrong, and the wrong one is the dangerous one.
Readiness here is computed from what’s left against the days remaining. The same 2 of 5 reads as on track in August and needs attention in September, without anyone changing anything.
And every flag names its cause. Not a color, not a score — a sentence you can act on: identity documents outstanding, four days to start.
They can see what’s happening, which is most of why they turn up.
The person who accepted your offer gets their own simple view: what’s been done, what you still need from them, and what the first day looks like. No login maze, no HR portal, no password reset at 9pm the night before.
It removes the two things that make people anxious in this window — not knowing whether anything is happening, and not knowing what’s expected of them.
And when they upload a document from their phone, your checklist updates. Nobody has to email a scan to somebody who then has to file it.
Through the first week, and through the first ninety days.
Most onboarding tools consider the job finished when someone walks in. The two moments that actually decide whether a hire worked are later than that.
They arrive.
Everything is ready because the checklist said what wasn’t. One action moves the whole record into Tanca HRM, and nobody retypes a name, a phone number, or a bank detail.
End of the first week.
A single check-in, prompted rather than remembered. This is the week people decide whether they made the right call.
The 90-day review.
The milestone arrives with the record already assembled: the interview scorecard, the assessment levels, and now three months of actual work.
That last one is where hiring finally gets a score. The competency levels from the interview sit next to the levels from the 90-day review, on the same scale — which is how you find out whether your hiring was any good.
See Competency Framework →The last step of hiring is the first record of employment.
Everything collected during recruitment and pre-onboarding is already correct and already verified. Retyping it into a separate HR system is where errors enter, and it’s an afternoon nobody has.
Without it
With it
The one green button on this website. It ends recruitment and starts employment, which is the only place that color belongs.
Not using Tanca HRM? Export the complete record instead. Nothing in this module requires it.
The seam between hiring and employment.
Pipeline & Candidates
Offer accepted
Pre-Onboarding
You are here
Tanca HRM
Employee record, attendance, payroll
Skillify
Development from day one
Competency Framework
The 90-day review on the hiring scale
This is the only point in the whole system where a candidate becomes an employee — which is why it’s also the point where hiring finally becomes measurable.
Measured inside the product.
Grocery chain · 22 stores
Share of accepted offers that started on time, first cohort
Logistics company · 3 warehouses in the south
Admin time removed per new hire
Admissions center · contact center
Hires still in role at 90 days, frontline roles
You’ll see the same numbers for your own hires from the first cohort.
Questions people ask about pre-onboarding.
Is this really free?
Yes, entirely. Nothing in this module uses AI time, so there’s no allowance and no per-hire cost.
Do we need Tanca HRM?
No. The handover is one click if you use it, and a full export if you don’t. Everything else works either way.
Can checklists differ per role?
Yes. Build a template per role, with an owner and a due offset for each item. A warehouse hire and a finance hire don’t need the same list.
How does the risk flag decide?
From what’s outstanding against the days remaining, plus how long it’s been since anyone was in touch. Every flag names its reason.
Does the new hire need an account?
They get a simple view with the things they need to see and a way to upload documents from a phone. No portal, no training.
What happens on the start date?
One action creates the employee record with the documents, the interview scorecard and the assessment levels attached.
Does it cover the first ninety days?
Yes, through the 90-day review, with the review landing on the same competency scale used at hiring.
Can we see why a hire didn’t start?
The record keeps the full history: what was outstanding, when contact happened, and when it stopped. That’s how a pattern becomes visible rather than a story.
Get the six weeks after “yes” back.
A checklist, an owner per item, and a signal when something is slipping. Free, and it takes an afternoon to set up.
Start free- No credit card
- No per-hire cost
- Works without Tanca HRM