AI Tool Onboarding Checklist for Small Businesses

1. AI tool onboarding card

Fill this out before inviting staff, connecting systems, or using the tool for customer-facing work.

AI tool/vendor: [name]
Approved use case: [one workflow]
Workflow owner: [person]
Reviewer: [person]
Users/seats invited: [names]
Allowed inputs: [public website copy, anonymized notes, internal SOPs, other]
Forbidden inputs: [customer PII, employee data, passwords, financial/legal/health/security data, other]
Customer-facing outputs allowed? [no / draft only after review / yes with approval]
Prompt/template storage location: [Drive/SOP/wiki link]
Pilot start and review date: [dates]
Success metric: [time saved, faster response, fewer errors, owner satisfaction]
Stop condition: [privacy concern, review burden too high, weak quality, no owner, low usage]

2. Setup checklist before rollout

• Create or confirm the business-owned account, not a personal throwaway account.
• Turn on available admin controls, two-factor authentication, workspace ownership, and billing owner visibility.
• Store approved prompts, examples, and review rules in the company prompt registry or SOP folder.
• Document which integrations are enabled: Gmail, CRM, website chat, calendar, Drive, Slack, Zapier/Make, or none.
• Disable or avoid integrations that would expose customer, employee, billing, legal, health, or security-sensitive data before owner review.

3. Team rollout message

Subject: New AI tool pilot: [tool name]

Team — we are testing [tool] for [workflow] from [start date] to [review date].

Allowed use: [specific allowed tasks]
Do not paste: customer private data, employee data, passwords, payment details, legal/medical/financial/security-sensitive information, or anything not approved by [owner].

Save useful prompts here: [link]
Send any customer-facing draft to [reviewer] before use.
If the tool gives a price, policy, promise, diagnosis, deadline, legal claim, or security claim, treat it as unverified and ask [owner].

4. AI prompt for an onboarding plan

You are helping a small business onboard one AI tool safely.

Known facts:
- Tool: [name]
- Workflow: [workflow]
- Users: [roles]
- Allowed data: [data]
- Forbidden data: [data]
- Reviewer: [person]
- Pilot length: [30 days or other]
- Success metric: [metric]

Create a rollout checklist with:
1. account/admin setup,
2. allowed and forbidden uses,
3. prompt/template storage rules,
4. reviewer handoff steps,
5. weekly pilot check-in questions,
6. keep/fix/pause/cancel decision criteria.

Do not invent vendor policies, privacy guarantees, legal requirements, security promises, pricing, deadlines, or integrations. Mark unknowns for human review.

5. Human-review stop rules

• Stop if no named owner is responsible for the AI workflow.
• Stop if users want to paste customer, employee, legal, financial, health, security, or proprietary data and the data boundary has not been approved.
• Stop if AI outputs will be sent to customers without a reviewer.
• Stop if the tool connects to live inboxes, CRM records, billing systems, website chat, or scheduling before the owner approves the integration.
• Stop if nobody can explain how success or failure will be measured at the pilot review.