· Nurul Aini
Marking the checklist complete is not the same as provisioning
Onboarding applications often let a person tick the last box while invites, billing, or roles are still pending. The completion timestamp then misleads every downstream report.
A completion flag is convenient. It feeds time-to-value reports, commission triggers, and the moment finance is told the customer is “live”. The flag is usually a button. The button is usually available before the last invite is accepted and before billing is attached.
We reconstruct completion from the underlying events: tenant created, verification passed, seats invited, roles assigned, billing instrument or invoice account linked, first successful login. If the flag fires earlier, the report should say so. If it can be fired by someone who is not the customer, that is an authorisation point.
Customer-success teams dislike this reconstruction because it makes onboarding look slower. That is the point. A slow, complete admission is safer than a fast tick that leaves an unpaid admin seat in the product.
If you only change one control, require the completion flag to be system-set when a defined event set is true, and keep a logged override for the exceptions you actually intend.