Client Vetting for Agencies That Onboard Clients Every Month

An agency lives on net-30 terms. You staff a team, buy media or licenses, and start producing work weeks before the first payment arrives. When a client turns out to be a dissolved entity, a shell behind a fresh domain or a business with a history of unpaid vendors, the loss lands on payroll. ClientVetter gives your agency one standard check for every new account and quiet monitoring for every active one. Sales, ops and finance see the same scored report, with the reason and source behind each flag, before anyone signs a statement of work.

Agency operations lead pinning a client intake sheet on a board in a bright studio

Why agencies need a written intake check

In most agencies, vetting depends on who closed the deal. One account lead looks up the registry, another trusts a good feeling on the discovery call, and nobody records what was checked. When a client stops paying, there is no trail showing what was known at the start and why terms were set the way they were.

Volume makes it harder. An agency that brings on two to ten clients a month cannot spend an hour per prospect clicking through state registries, domain records, review platforms, court news and sanctions lists. The result is uneven risk and a finance team that only hears about a client after the second missed invoice.

ClientVetter turns that hour into a repeatable step that takes a minute and leaves a record.

One check at the start of every engagement

Make the report a required item in your intake checklist, next to the proposal and the contract.

The account lead pastes the prospect's domain and picks the state and project value.
The report shows registry status and formation date, domain age, website and mail setup, public review summary, dispute and payment mentions, sanctions screening and verified member reports.
The risk score from 0 to 100 comes with a band (Low, Watch, High) and a written reason for every point.
Suggested terms by band, such as a deposit, milestone billing or shorter payment terms, give the account lead a neutral way to propose safer terms. These are guidance, not legal advice.
The report is saved to the account, so finance can open the exact version that was used for the decision.

For the full list of report sections and team features, see our client screening software overview.

Check a client

Keep watching clients after the contract is signed

The riskiest moment is not always the first week. Clients change: a registry status moves to forfeited, a domain lapses, a lawsuit about unpaid vendors appears in public court records, or a new verified non-payment report is filed by another member.

ClientVetter monitors your active clients and sends an alert when something material changes. On Team, alerts go by email and Slack. On Agency, they can also be sent to a webhook, so the change shows up in your project tool or billing system. Your ops lead can then hold the next phase, ask for a payment before more work, or simply confirm that everything is fine. Read more about business credit monitoring for active accounts.

Built for a team, not one inbox

Agencies need more than one login. The Team and Agency plans are made for that.

Team: 120 full checks and 50 monitored clients a month, 5 seats, roles, PDF export with shareable links, email and Slack alerts, search and submit non-payment reports.
Agency: 400 full checks and 250 monitored clients a month, 15 seats, roles and an audit log, branded PDF, email, Slack and webhook alerts, and API access.

Usage resets each billing period, and deleting a report does not return a check, so your counts stay honest.

The audit log on Agency shows who checked which client and when, which is useful when a client dispute reaches your finance or legal advisers.

See pricing

Signed contract, a delivery note and an invoice laid out on an oak table with a folder, daylight from a window

Report a client who did not pay, with evidence

When a client leaves an invoice unpaid, your team can submit a report to the shared non paying clients database. Every report needs evidence: a signed contract or accepted proposal, the unpaid invoice, and proof of delivery or correspondence. Reports state facts only (amount band, dates, status), go through moderation before publication, and the reported business is notified and gets a right of reply shown next to the report.

If the business disputes, the report is hidden during review, and unsupported reports are removed. When the invoice gets paid, the report is marked Resolved. Reports are visible only to logged-in paying members and are never public or indexed.

The numbers for the agency owner

One unpaid project usually costs more than ten years of the Team plan. Team is $129 a month, or $64 a month billed yearly at $768 a year. Agency is $299 a month, or $149 a month billed yearly at $1,788 a year. Both plans are self-serve, with no sales calls, and you can cancel anytime.

A written check also helps when you set terms with a client. It is easier to ask for a deposit when you can point to a standard process that every new account goes through. If you want a deeper checklist for the whole engagement, our guide to client due diligence covers it step by step.

Can several people in the agency use one account?

Yes. Team includes 5 seats and Agency includes 15, with roles so you can decide who can submit reports and who can only read them.

Does the client see that we checked them?

No. Checks are private to your account. A business is notified only when a member submits a non-payment report about it.

Can we check the contact person who signs the contract?

Yes, in their role at the company only. We look at the role, the company's own pages, public professional profiles and sanctions lists. We never look at home addresses, criminal records, family or private life.

Can we connect alerts to our own tools?

Team sends alerts by email and Slack. Agency adds webhooks and API access, so you can pull reports into your CRM or billing system.

Electrical contractor in work clothes at a counter in his workshop office at dusk, sliding a new client's printed proposal into a kraft folder next to a clipboard and a mug

Add a standard check to your client intake

Run the first check on a current prospect and see the signals in about a minute. No card needed for the preview.

Start checking clients