# Onboarding a New Facebook Ads Client: Access Checklist

> Onboarding a new Facebook Ads client: the access to request up front, how to audit what you inherit, and what to agree before the first campaign runs.

Author: The DashOps Team  |  Published: 2026-10-06  |  Updated: 2026-10-13  |  Topic: Agency & Client Work

The contract is signed, the kickoff call went well, and then everything stops. You are waiting on an ad account ID nobody can find, a Page where someone added you as an editor by mistake, and a pixel that may or may not still be firing. The client asks when ads are going live and you do not have a good answer, because the honest answer is "when your last agency replies to my email". Onboarding a new Facebook Ads client is mostly an access problem and an information problem, and the agencies that stay calm through it are the ones treating it as a fixed sequence rather than an open conversation.

This post is about the handover itself: what to ask for, in what order, how to check what you were actually given, and how to make a client feel looked after before a single ad runs. For how onboarding fits into the wider rhythm of running Meta Ads for other people, see the [agency workflow guide](/resources/meta-ads-agency-workflow).

![image_20261013_223407-httpsdashopsioresourceslooking-established-as-a-sm-httpsdashopsioresourceslogo](https://pub-ae7c0247bc134935855f21b665422e27.r2.dev/posts/1791913208045-62f027acaf65.jpg)

## Take access as a partner, never as a person

The decision that causes the most pain later is how you get in. There are two routes: the client adds your personal Facebook profile to their assets, or the client's Business Manager shares those assets with your agency's Business Manager as a partner.

Personal access feels faster on the call. It is the wrong choice. It ties a client's advertising to one human being, so when that person is on holiday, replaces their phone, loses their authenticator app, or leaves your agency, the account goes quiet with them. It also makes offboarding messy, because removing a colleague from your own team does nothing to remove them from a client's ad account.

Partner sharing, where one business shares an asset with another business, keeps the relationship at company level. You then decide internally who touches which client. When a buyer leaves, you remove them once from your own Business Manager and their access to every client disappears with them. When an engagement ends, the client revokes one partner and you are cleanly out, with nothing lingering under someone's personal profile.

Ask for it in the client's words, because "partner access" is not language most business owners use. Something closer to: "In your Business Settings there is a Partners section. Add our business ID, then share your ad account and Page with us, and set us as admin on the ad account." Put your business ID in the same message so there is nothing for them to go and find.

## Ask for every asset by name

"Give us access to the ads account" is where onboarding goes to die, because the ad account is only one of the things you need and rarely the one that breaks. Request the full set explicitly, as a list they can work through:

- **The ad account**, with admin permission rather than advertiser, so you can change settings and manage people later.
- **The Facebook Page** the ads run from, with a role that lets you create and publish.
- **The Instagram account**, connected to the Page or shared to the business, if you will use Instagram placements or the client's Instagram identity.
- **The pixel or dataset** used for conversions, plus confirmation of which events it sends and where they fire.
- **The catalog**, if shopping or dynamic ads exist now or are likely later.
- **Existing custom audiences** worth keeping, and confirmation of which business actually owns them.
- **Billing context**: whose card is on file, whose name appears on invoices, and whether the account has ever been restricted.
- **Lead destinations**, if campaigns collect leads through Instant Forms or messaging, including who currently receives them.

Every item on that list has caught out an agency that assumed the rest came with the ad account. A pixel owned by a former developer's personal business, a catalog inside an account nobody can log into, and a Page owned by a marketing manager who left last year are all ordinary week one discoveries. All of them are far easier to untangle while the client is still in onboarding mode than later in the engagement, when the client is waiting on results.

## Audit what you inherited before you change anything

Resist the urge to pause everything and rebuild on day one. If you change everything at once you cannot explain what caused any change in results, and you throw away learning the client already paid for.

Spend the first working session reading. Go back across a meaningful stretch of history and write down what genuinely ran: objectives, audiences, creatives, offers, and how the account performed across different periods. Note what is paused and try to establish why. Note anything still active but forgotten, because inherited accounts almost always contain at least one ad set quietly spending against an offer that no longer exists.

Then check the plumbing rather than the strategy. Is the pixel receiving events. Do the conversion events the campaigns optimise for match the events the website actually sends. Does the number of purchases the platform reports resemble what the client sees in their own back office. If those do not agree, fixing them is the first job, ahead of any new campaign, because every number you report for the rest of the relationship rests on that foundation.

Write the audit up and send it. A short, plain summary of what you found is the most valuable thing you can hand a client in week one, and it sets the tone that you tell them things before they have to ask.

## Settle reporting before the first campaign runs

Reporting is easy to defer until a client requests it, at which point it becomes an emergency you solve by hand at the end of a Friday. Agree it during onboarding, while the client is engaged and nothing is on fire.

Three things to settle in writing: what this client counts as success, in their language rather than platform language; which numbers they see and how often; and who else at their company receives it, because a founder and a finance lead usually want different things from the same account.

Then build it once. With DashOps you connect the client's Meta ad account by OAuth and the reporting exists from that moment: a dashboard with period-over-period comparison, PDF or Excel reports on demand, and a scheduled email that goes out without anyone remembering to send it. Setting that schedule during onboarding is what stops reporting turning into a recurring scramble. If you are onboarding into a roster rather than starting fresh, settle on one shape and reuse it, which is covered in [standardising reports across clients](/resources/standardise-ads-reports-across-clients).

## Give the client their own view from day one

Every new client has a quiet worry early on: is anything actually happening. A login answers it better than any status email.

Give them a read-only view scoped to their own ad accounts, with your branding rather than a tool they have never heard of. If you bill a retainer or manage budget on their behalf and would rather not expose spend, hide it and show results only. If they want to forward a snapshot to a colleague who will never log in, a read-only share link does that without creating another account. DashOps supports all three, and they are switched on during onboarding rather than negotiated later.

Pair the login with a rhythm, so the dashboard is a place they can check rather than something they are expected to monitor. A short recurring summary works well for this, and [a weekly digest](/resources/facebook-ads-weekly-digest) is usually the right cadence to start with.

## Write down the things you will forget

The last onboarding step is documentation, and it is the one most often skipped. In one place, record which business owns which asset, who the admin contact is on the client side, what the naming convention for campaigns will be, which conversion event is the source of truth, and what was agreed about reporting.

You are writing this for the version of you that picks the account back up long after the handover, and for whoever covers it when you are away. An audit log of who changed what covers the account itself, but it will never tell anyone why the client's pixel lives under a different business or why one campaign is named the way it is.

## What to do next

Take the asset list above and turn it into a single message you send to every new client, with your business ID already in it. Add the audit questions as a checklist you complete before you launch anything, and make "reporting agreed and scheduled" a step that has to be ticked before the first campaign goes live rather than a task that appears later. Onboarding a new Facebook Ads client stops being stressful the moment it stops being improvised.

## Frequently asked questions

### Should the client add me to their ad account, or share it with my business?

Ask them to share it with your business as a partner. Adding your personal profile works, but it ties the client's advertising to one individual. If that person is unavailable, changes phone, or leaves your agency, access goes with them, and removing someone from your team does not remove them from the client's assets. Partner sharing keeps the relationship company to company, so you control who internally touches which account.

### What should I do first in an inherited Facebook Ads account?

Read before you change anything. Go back across a meaningful stretch of history and note which objectives, audiences, creatives and offers actually ran, and what results the account produced at different times. Check whether anything is still quietly active. Then verify the plumbing: is the pixel receiving events, and do the conversion events campaigns optimise for match what the site really sends. Fix measurement before you touch strategy.

### Which assets do I need besides the ad account?

The Facebook Page the ads run from, the Instagram account if you will use Instagram placements or identity, the pixel or dataset that records conversions, the catalog if shopping or dynamic ads are involved, any custom audiences worth keeping, and clarity on billing. If the client collects leads through Instant Forms or messaging, confirm access to those too. Ad account only is the most common cause of a stalled launch.

### When should I set up client reporting during onboarding?

Before the first campaign goes live. Agree what the client considers success in their own language, which numbers they see, how often, and who else receives it. Then build it once and schedule it. Reporting agreed during onboarding is calm; reporting agreed after a client asks for it becomes a manual scramble that repeats every reporting cycle and quietly consumes account management time.

### Should a new client get their own login?

Yes, and it is worth doing early rather than after the first awkward review call. A read-only view that shows their own ad accounts only, with the option to hide spend if you bill on a retainer or a managed budget, answers the quiet question every new client has about whether anything is happening. It also reduces status emails.

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Full page: https://dashops.io/resources/onboarding-a-new-facebook-ads-client