People & HR

How to onboard a new hire as Local Service Business Founders

People & HRFor Local Service Business Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

When you hire a new plumber or HVAC tech, onboarding is a stack of texts, a paper packet in the truck, and you personally walking them through how you quote jobs, what to do when a customer isn't home, and where to find the materials list — every single time. There's no written process. Your senior tech holds the tribal knowledge. New hires spend their first two weeks asking questions you've answered a hundred times, making mistakes on calls because they don't know your callback policy, and logging hours wrong because nobody showed them how you track time in Jobber or Housecall Pro. You lose two to three billable days per hire just babysitting the ramp.

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People & HRFor Local Service Business Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A searchable team wiki that holds your SOPs, callback scripts, pricing logic, and job-type checklists — so your new hire can find answers without texting you from the jobsite

A task checklist that walks each new hire through every onboarding step in priority order with due dates, so nothing gets skipped and you can see where they are without asking

An inbox triage setup so HR paperwork emails, benefits enrollment deadlines, and new-hire form confirmations don't get buried under customer quote requests

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Knowledge Management Task Manager

Data sources & config

Knowledge Management connects to Notion (Starch syncs your Notion pages on a schedule) so any SOPs you've already written there pull in automatically. Task Manager runs standalone — no external integration needed. Email Triage connects to Gmail (Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule) to pull and triage new-hire paperwork threads. If your payroll runs through ADP or Paylocity, Starch syncs those directly and can surface new-hire status in your wiki. For Jobber, Housecall Pro, or ServiceTitan — which don't have deep API connections — Starch automates them through your browser, no API needed, to pull job codes and employee IDs into your onboarding checklist.

Prompts to copy

Build me a team wiki with sections for: how we quote jobs (flat-rate vs time-and-materials), what to do when a customer isn't home, our callback policy within 2 hours, how to log hours in Housecall Pro, materials ordering process, and emergency escalation. Each section should have a short summary at the top and a step-by-step checklist below.

Create an onboarding task list for a new field tech hire. P1 tasks due day 1: complete I-9, get truck keys, shadow first job. P2 tasks due week 1: read callback policy, complete five practice quotes, log first week's hours. P3 tasks due week 2: solo first job with check-in call, submit first materials order. Alert me if any P1 task is overdue by end of day.

Set up email triage so any message with 'new hire', 'onboarding', 'I-9', 'W-4', 'benefits enrollment', or 'background check' gets flagged as high priority and summarized at the top of my daily digest. Draft a reply template acknowledging receipt and giving a two-business-day response window.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Open the Knowledge Management app in Starch and type: 'Build me a team wiki for a field service business with sections for quoting, job-site protocols, customer callback rules, time tracking in Housecall Pro, and materials ordering.' Starch generates the structure in under a minute.

2 Connect your Notion workspace if you already have any written docs there — Starch syncs your Notion pages on a schedule and pulls them into the wiki automatically, so you're not starting from scratch.

3 Go through each wiki section and add your specific numbers: your flat-rate prices by job type, your two-hour callback window, which supplier accounts to use for which materials. This is the one-time work that replaces every future 'hey, quick question' text.

4 Open the Task Manager app and type: 'Create a repeatable onboarding checklist for a new field tech — P1 tasks on day 1, P2 tasks by end of week 1, P3 tasks by end of week 2. Include: I-9, background check follow-up, first shadow job, five practice quotes reviewed by me, first solo job with check-in.' Starch builds the list with priority levels and due date logic.

5 When a new hire starts, duplicate the checklist and assign it to that hire's start date. The Task Manager tracks overdue items and surfaces them in your daily view so you catch a missed I-9 before it becomes a compliance problem.

6 Open the Email Triage app (listed as Founder Inbox in the App Store) and connect your Gmail account — Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule. Type: 'Flag any emails about I-9, W-4, benefits, background checks, or onboarding as high priority and draft a holding reply for each.'

7 For Housecall Pro or Jobber: tell Starch, 'Go into my Housecall Pro account and pull the list of job codes and service categories so I can add them to the wiki's quoting section.' Starch automates this through your browser — no API needed — and returns the list for you to paste into the relevant wiki section.

8 Add a 'New Hire Quick Reference' page to your wiki with just the five things every new hire needs on day one: truck number, parts account login, emergency contact, your cell, and the Housecall Pro login. Link to it in the task checklist as a P1 step.

9 Set up a recurring Task Manager reminder: 'Every time I mark a new hire's onboarding checklist complete, remind me to do a 30-day check-in call and ask them which part of onboarding was most confusing.' This becomes your process improvement loop.

10 Share the wiki link with your new hire before their first day. Tell Starch: 'Add a short intro page to the wiki that says what we do, how we operate, and who to call with what kind of question.' New hire shows up knowing the basics instead of asking you all of them.

11 After 60 days, tell Starch: 'Review the onboarding task list completion rates and tell me which tasks were most commonly late or skipped.' Use that to tighten the checklist for the next hire.

See this running on Starch

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Worked example

First Week — Marcus Joins as HVAC Tech, April 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

I-9 and W-4 paperwork completed	1
Background check confirmation email triaged	1
Practice quotes reviewed by owner (target: 5)	5
Wiki pages read and confirmed (quoting, callbacks, materials)	3
Shadow jobs completed before solo	2
Owner hours spent on direct onboarding questions	3

Marcus starts Monday. Before Starch, you'd have spent Sunday night texting him the Housecall Pro login, Monday morning walking him through your flat-rate pricing sheet in the parking lot, and Wednesday answering four texts about what to do when a customer wants to add scope mid-job. With Starch set up: Marcus gets the wiki link Sunday night. He reads the quoting section, the callback policy, and the materials ordering page before he shows up. His task list auto-populates with 4 P1 items due day one — I-9, truck orientation, shadow job 1, and confirming he's read the quick-reference page. You get an email digest Monday morning that flags the background check confirmation from your screening vendor as high priority and has a draft reply ready. By Wednesday, Marcus has completed all five practice quotes, you've reviewed them inside the task tracker, and your owner hours spent answering his direct questions total 3 — down from the 8-10 you logged the last time you hired. The tribal knowledge is now in the wiki, not in your head.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Owner hours spent answering new-hire questions per onboarding cycle (target: under 4 hours in week 1)

Days from start date to first solo job completed without a check-in call

Onboarding checklist task completion rate by due date (P1, P2, P3 separately)

Number of HR/paperwork emails missed or replied to late in new hire's first two weeks

Callback policy compliance rate in new hire's first 30 days (tracked via customer complaint tickets)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Paper packet + verbal walkthrough

Zero cost but zero scale — the process lives in your head and resets completely every time you hire, which costs you 8-10 owner-hours per onboarding cycle.

Google Docs folder

Free and familiar, but there's no AI search, no stale-content detection, no task tracking, and your new hire will still text you when they can't find the right doc.

Gusto or Rippling onboarding module

Handles the payroll paperwork side well, but doesn't cover job-site SOPs, quoting logic, or Housecall Pro workflows — you still need a separate place for the operational knowledge.

Trainual or Notion as a standalone wiki

Decent for writing SOPs, but no task manager integration, no inbox triage, and no browser automation to pull job codes from your field service platform — you're assembling three separate tools instead of one.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — knowledge management, task manager, founder inbox all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

I use Housecall Pro. Can Starch actually pull job codes and customer data from it?

Yes, but not through a direct API connection — Starch automates Housecall Pro through your browser, no API needed. You'd tell Starch what you want pulled (job codes, service categories, customer list) and it navigates your Housecall Pro account the same way you would and returns the data. It's not as fast as a direct sync, but it works without waiting for an official integration.

What if my onboarding docs are already in a Google Doc or Notion page? Do I have to rewrite everything?

If you're using Notion, Starch syncs your Notion pages on a schedule and can pull them directly into the Knowledge Management wiki — no rewriting. For Google Docs, connect Google Drive from Starch's integration catalog and the agent can read and reference your existing docs when building the wiki structure.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? I'm storing employee info like I-9 status in here.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If your compliance requirements need that certification, that's worth knowing upfront. For most small field service businesses, the wiki is operational knowledge (quoting, SOPs, job protocols), not sensitive HR records — keep your actual I-9 documents in your payroll system like ADP or Paylocity, which Starch also connects to separately.

My new hire isn't tech-savvy. Will they actually use a wiki?

The wiki has a plain-language AI search — your tech types 'what do I do if the customer isn't home' and gets a direct answer, not a list of links to scroll through. That's meaningfully easier than a Google Docs folder. That said, you know your team — if they won't look anything up digitally, the bigger win for you is probably the task manager and inbox triage, so you're spending less time managing the process yourself.

Can Starch automate sending the new hire their paperwork links on day one?

Yes. Tell Starch: 'When I mark a new hire task as started, send them a Gmail with links to the I-9 form, the benefits enrollment page, and the team wiki, and set a 48-hour reminder to follow up if they haven't replied.' Starch connects to Gmail on a schedule and can draft and send that email automatically. The follow-up reminder surfaces in your task manager as a P1 item if it's not resolved in time.

What happens when the wiki goes out of date? I know I won't remember to update it.

Knowledge Management has stale-content detection built in — it flags pages that haven't been updated recently and prompts you to review them. You can also tell Starch: 'Every quarter, remind me to review the quoting section and the materials ordering page and flag anything that looks outdated.' The goal is to make maintaining the wiki less work than answering the same question for the fifteenth time.