The offer is signed, the start date is circled, and then your inbox fills up: onboarding portal invitations, benefits packets, forms with acronyms you haven't thought about since your last first day. None of it is hard. But two or three of these papers have real deadlines, and most of them will matter again years from now — at tax time, in a salary dispute, or when someone asks you to prove where you worked in 2026.
Here's the whole pile, sorted.
The offer letter: keep the version you signed
Your offer letter (or employment contract) is the one document from this week that settles arguments. Salary, bonus structure, equity or options, start date, job title, severance terms if you're lucky — if any of it is ever disputed, the signed copy is what counts, not your memory of the phone call.
Save the final signed PDF, not the draft. If negotiations happened over email ("we'll bump the signing bonus to $5,000"), keep those emails too — export the thread or screenshot it. Promises made in email have a way of not appearing in the letter, and you want your own record either way.
Day one: the I-9 and the documents that prove you're you
In the US, your employer has to verify your identity and your authorization to work, generally within your first three days. That's the I-9, and it's the one form you can't do from the couch — they need to see original documents, not photos.
You'll bring either:
- One document that proves both — most commonly a US passport, or
- A combination — typically a driver's license (identity) plus a Social Security card or birth certificate (work authorization).
The exact acceptable lists live on uscis.gov and change occasionally, so check before day one. The practical advice: locate these documents the week before you start, not the morning of. The number of people who discover their Social Security card is "somewhere in the apartment" at 7 a.m. on day one is not small. While you have them out, photograph them — these are exactly the papers worth backing up properly, because losing the originals is a much longer errand than any onboarding form.
Tax forms: five minutes now, real money later
You'll fill out a W-4 (federal withholding) and usually a state equivalent. This tells payroll how much tax to hold back from each check. Get it roughly right — the IRS has a free withholding estimator, worth the ten minutes if you have two incomes in the household or you're jumping salary bands.
Keep a copy of what you submitted. If your first real paycheck looks wrong, the W-4 you filed is the first thing to compare against. And this is a good moment to start keeping tax documents organized year-round instead of reconstructing everything next April — a job change guarantees you'll have two W-2s to chase down, and January-you will be grateful.
Benefits enrollment: the deadline that doesn't forgive
This is the deadline that actually bites. Most US employers give new hires about 30 days from the start date to enroll in health, dental, and vision insurance. Miss the window and you're generally locked out until open enrollment — which can be nearly a year of going without.
So in week one, find three things in the benefits packet:
- Your exact enrollment deadline (a date, not "30 days" — count it out).
- The plan summaries for each option, so you can compare premiums and deductibles without the portal fighting you.
- The confirmation page once you enroll. Screenshot it. Enrollment portals have been known to quietly not save things.
Keep the plan documents after you choose, too. When the first medical bills and insurance statements start arriving, you'll want the plan summary next to them — deciphering an explanation of benefits is a whole scenario of its own, and it's far easier with your actual coverage terms in hand.
The 401(k): two forms people forget they filled out
Retirement enrollment usually comes with less urgency — some employers auto-enroll you — but it produces two documents worth keeping:
- Your contribution election — what percentage you chose, and whether it's enough to capture the full employer match. The match terms live in the plan documents; keep those.
- Your beneficiary designation. This one quietly outranks your will for this account. People fill it out on day three of a job and never look at it again, including after marriages, divorces, and kids. Keep a copy so you know what it says.
Don't let the old job evaporate
The paperwork week has a second half that's easy to skip: closing out the job you just left. Before your old logins die, collect:
- Your final pay stub — it shows paid-out vacation and your year-to-date withholding, which you'll want to check against the W-2 they mail you.
- The COBRA notice, if you have a gap before new coverage starts.
- Old 401(k) statements and rollover paperwork. Accounts left behind at old employers are famously easy to lose track of; a statement with the plan administrator's name on it is how you find the money again in ten years.
- Anything proving what you earned — bonus letters, equity statements. Former employers merge, get acquired, and lose records. Your copy is the durable one.
Where all of this matters later
| Document | When you'll want it again |
|---|---|
| Signed offer letter | Salary or severance disputes; proving employment history |
| I-9 identity documents | Every future job, travel, license renewals |
| W-4 copy | First-paycheck sanity check; withholding questions |
| Benefits confirmation & plan docs | Claim denials, billing surprises, every EOB |
| 401(k) elections & beneficiary form | Match verification; life changes; your heirs |
| Final pay stub from the old job | W-2 verification at tax time; income proof |
Notice the pattern: none of these matter this month. They matter in eight months, or three years, when the question is specific ("what did my offer letter say about the bonus?") and the document is a photo somewhere in your camera roll between lunch pictures.
That gap — saving things is easy, finding them later is the hard part — is exactly what Paperlock is built for. Photograph the pile once during onboarding week and it reads each document, files it behind Face ID with no folders to invent, and answers the specific question later: "what's my 401(k) match?" or "when did I start at this job?" — with the actual document attached. That's the whole idea, and it's coming soon to iPhone.
Manual or not, do the gathering this week, while everything is still in one inbox. Future-you, sitting across from HR or a tax form, will be very glad the paperwork week ended with the papers somewhere findable.