Onboarding & Probation Tracker

What this tool does

CM8-30 is a working register for new starters. One row per person carries their start date, how much of the onboarding checklist is done, the dates of their probation reviews and where they stand — onboarding, in probation, passed, extended, failed or left. From that the tool works out days since start, the probation end date, checklist completion, and which reviews are overdue or coming up, then prints a one-page summary a manager or an HR meeting can work from.

Everything runs inside this single file. There is no account, no upload and no network request of any kind, so names, review outcomes and notes never leave the computer you are using. That matters: a probation record is personal data about identifiable people, and some of it — a failed probation, an early resignation — is sensitive.

Setting it up

Three settings drive the calculations, and it is worth getting them right before you add people:

• Probation length — your standard period in days. The default is 90; six-month probations are common in some countries, so set what your contracts actually say. Every hire's probation end date is their start date plus this figure.
• Default checklist total — how many items are on your standard onboarding checklist. A hire whose own total is left blank uses this figure, so completion percentages stay honest without retyping the number on every row.
• Review warning window — reviews due within this many days are flagged as due soon. Two weeks is a sensible default: enough time to get a meeting into two diaries.

Currency and date format are set once for all CapsuleM8 tools and are already in the Settings tab.

Recording a new hire

Add a row the day the offer is accepted, not the day the person walks in. Onboarding starts before day one — equipment ordered, accounts requested, first-week plan written — and the tracker handles a future start date cleanly: the register shows "starts in n days" instead of a day count.

Set the two review dates when you create the row. A first review roughly halfway through probation and a final review shortly before it ends is the pattern most organisations use; the exact timing is yours, but a date in the diary from day one is the single best defence against the commonest probation failure — the review that never happens and the probation that silently lapses.

Tick First review held or Final review held once the meeting has actually taken place. The overdue flag depends on those ticks: a dated review that is not ticked and whose date has passed is overdue, and the tool will keep saying so until you tick it or move the date.

The onboarding checklist

The tracker does not hold the checklist items themselves — keep your checklist wherever it lives today — it tracks the count: items completed against the total for that hire. That is enough to see, across every starter at once, who is being onboarded properly and who has been left to sink or swim.

Use the per-hire total when a role genuinely has a different checklist — a sales role with product certification, a driver with licence checks. Update the completed count when something meaningful changes, typically weekly; a register updated once at the start and once at the end tells you nothing in between.

The completion figure is deliberately blunt. It weights every item equally, so ten easy items done and the one that matters outstanding still reads 91%. Read it alongside the notes, not instead of them.

Probation reviews

The review pipeline chart counts every review still to be held for an active hire — each first and final review that has a pending tick counts once — and splits them into overdue, due within the warning window, scheduled later, and no date set. "No date set" is worth acting on just as much as "overdue": an active hire with no review date is a probation running on autopilot.

The Reviews due in the next 60 days table on the Reports tab lists the pending reviews in date order, including anything already overdue, with each hire's checklist position beside it — so you walk into the review knowing whether the onboarding side of the bargain was kept.

Statuses, and when to change them

• Onboarding — the first days and weeks, checklist in progress.
• In probation — settled into the job, working towards the reviews. The line between this and onboarding is yours to draw; many teams switch after the first month.
• Passed — confirmed in post. Set it the day the decision is made.
• Extended — probation extended at a review. Record the new end date in the notes (see below).
• Failed — probation not passed. Record the reasons in the notes factually.
• Left — resigned or otherwise gone before probation concluded.

Onboarding, probation and extended count as active; those rows drive the checklist averages and the review flags. Passed, failed and left are outcomes, and they drive the pass rate.

How every figure is calculated

The checklist total is the hire's own figure if one is entered, otherwise the default from Settings. Completion is capped at 100% and the tool refuses a completed count larger than the total.

Hires who have passed, failed or left are excluded from the average — including them would let last year's completed checklists flatter this month's onboarding.

People who left before probation concluded are excluded from the pass rate on both sides: a resignation is neither a pass nor a fail, and counting it either way distorts the figure. The tile states how many concluded probations the rate is based on — with only a handful, one outcome swings it by a lot, so read small denominators cautiously. With none, it shows a dash rather than a number.

Reading the pass rate

A very high pass rate is not automatically good news, and a lower one is not automatically bad. If nearly everyone passes, either hiring is excellent or reviews are a rubber stamp; if many fail, either selection is missing badly or onboarding is not giving people a fair chance. The number tells you to look — the notes and the department summary tell you where. A department with low checklist averages and failed probations is usually an onboarding problem wearing a performance problem's clothes.

Extended probations

Be aware of one honest limitation: the probation end date shown is always start date plus your standard length. When you extend a probation, the tool does not recalculate the end date, because extensions vary case by case — so record the agreed new end date in the notes, and set the final review date to match it. The Extended status keeps the hire in every active count and review flag, which is what matters operationally.

Check what your contracts and local rules say before extending: in some places an extension must be agreed before the original period ends, and in others the ability to extend at all depends on the contract wording.

Printing and sharing

Print Report produces a report from whatever the current filter shows: the headline tiles, the four charts, the upcoming-reviews and department tables, the full register and your closing notes. Print to PDF to circulate it. The scope line under the title states any filter in force — clear the filters before issuing anything described as the full picture.

Remember what the report contains before you share it widely: names, review outcomes and notes. Circulate it to the people who need it and no further, and keep the notes factual — write every note as if the person named will one day read it, because in many countries they are entitled to.

Saving your work

Hires, settings and the report header are written to this browser's local storage as you type, and the toolbar shows the time of the last save. That storage belongs to one browser on one computer: another browser, a private window, a second machine or a clean-up tool that clears site data will not have it.

Treat Export .json as the real save — one file containing everything, which Import .json restores anywhere. Export CSV gives you the register for spreadsheet work and includes every filtered record. Reset asks twice, then erases everything this tool has stored. There is no undo.

Accuracy & disclaimer

This tool records what you enter and calculates from it. It cannot tell whether a review actually took place, whether a checklist item was done well or merely ticked, or whether a probation decision was fair — and it shows the standard probation end date even when an extension has changed the real one.

Probation law differs widely by country: minimum notice during probation, limits on length and extension, and the protections that apply from day one are all local matters. This is a record-keeping and planning aid, not legal or HR advice, and not a substitute for either. Take advice before acting on a probation outcome, especially a dismissal.