Free Employee Onboarding Checklist Template (Excel)
What Belongs in a New Employee Onboarding Checklist
This is a new-hire onboarding checklist for bringing an employee into the company - offer paperwork, equipment, first-day logistics, first-week ramp-up, and the 30-60-90 day check-ins that follow. It's built for HR and hiring managers, not for a customer- or client-facing onboarding flow, which is a different kind of checklist entirely.
A good onboarding checklist spans more than day one: pre-boarding tasks happen before the employee even walks in, and the 30-60-90 day check-ins matter as much as the first-week tour for making sure a new hire actually settles in and hits their stride.
This template covers that full span in one sheet - six phases, each with the specific tasks and the person responsible for getting them done.
Free Onboarding Checklist Template Walkthrough
The sheet comes with 22 tasks prefilled across six phases: Pre-boarding, Day 1, Week 1, 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. Tasks range from sending the offer letter and running a background check, to workstation setup, a welcome lunch, scheduled 1:1s, compliance training, and a final 90-day review.
Each task has an Owner column set to HR, Manager, IT, or Employee, a Due date field, and a Status dropdown you switch from Pending to Done as work gets completed - rows marked Done highlight so you can scan progress at a glance.
Everything is editable: rename a prefilled task, delete what doesn't apply to your company, or add rows for role-specific onboarding steps particular to the position being filled.
Tracking Completion by Phase (Pre-Boarding to 90 Days)
The summary block calculates a completion percentage for each phase - Pre-boarding, Day 1, and Week 1 individually, plus a combined 30-60-90 days figure - by counting how many tasks in that phase are marked Done against the total task count for the phase.
An overall completion percentage rolls up every task across all six phases into a single number, useful for a quick status update to a manager without scrolling the whole sheet.
Because the percentages recalculate the moment you change a status, you can use the sheet as a live progress tracker throughout a new hire's first 90 days rather than a one-time checklist you fill out and forget.
Assigning Tasks to HR, Manager and IT
The prefilled Owner assignments follow a typical split: HR handles paperwork and compliance, IT handles accounts and equipment, and the direct Manager handles the people-facing steps like intros, 1:1s, and progress reviews. Adjust any of these to match how your company actually divides the work.
Because Owner is its own column rather than buried in a task description, you can filter or sort the sheet by owner to see, for example, everything IT still needs to complete before day one, without wading through HR and Manager tasks in between.
How to use it
- Work through the prefilled tasks phase by phase, starting with Pre-boarding and moving through to the 90-day mark.
- Assign each task an owner (HR, Manager, or IT) and a due date.
- Mark tasks Done as they're completed - the row highlights and the phase completion percent updates automatically.
- Check the summary block for completion by phase and overall progress at any point during the new hire's first 90 days.
Download the free Free Employee Onboarding Checklist Template (Excel)
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PTO & Leave Tracker — with Automatic Accrual
Once a new hire is settled in, the next HR task is keeping their time off straight - the paid PTO & Leave Tracker ($19) calculates accrual automatically by policy and tenure tier across PTO, sick, and personal leave, for up to 30 employees, with no macros to maintain.
See the full versionFrequently asked questions
Can I use this onboarding checklist in Google Sheets?
Yes. Upload the downloaded file to Google Drive, open it, and choose File > Save as Google Sheets. The dropdowns, conditional formatting, and completion formulas keep working.
Is this template really free?
Yes. You give an email address to download it, and then it's yours to use with no further cost.
Is this for onboarding customers or clients instead of employees?
No - this checklist is specifically for bringing on a new employee (HR, IT, and manager tasks from pre-boarding through the 90-day mark). A client or customer onboarding workflow needs different fields.
Can I add my own tasks or change the phases?
Yes, it's a standard Excel/Google Sheets file. Edit, delete, or add task rows, and adjust the Owner and Phase dropdown lists to match your company's process.
How is the completion percentage calculated?
For each phase, it's the count of tasks marked Done divided by the total number of tasks in that phase. The overall figure does the same calculation across all tasks in the sheet.
What's the usage license?
Personal use or use within one business. It's not meant to be resold or redistributed as a template product.