CA onboarding collapsed to 4 steps; bank + pricing moved post-approval

Decision

CA onboarding is 4 steps (You, Business, Consent, Pending), not 5. Bank account (penny-drop) and service pricing move from onboarding to the post-approval CA portal.

Why

Wireframes (onboarding/ca/credentials.html, onboarding/ca/bank.html, onboarding/ca/pricing.html, onboarding/ca/dpdp.html, onboarding/pending.html) specified 5 onboarding steps. Implementation collapsed credentials + business identity into a single business step and moved bank-account capture (penny-drop) + service pricing to the post-approval CA portal (/ca/portal/profile for bank, /ca/portal/pricing for service pricing). Neither field is an admin-approval signal — admin needs identity + KYC + specialty + DPDP attestations to decide approval, not the bank or the price list. Collecting them post-approval reduces application friction and lets admins reject faster.

Impact

• Live onboarding routes: /onboarding/ca/you (identity + ICAI + KYC), /onboarding/ca/business (firm + years + specialisations + bio), /onboarding/ca/consent (DPDP principal + processor attestations), /onboarding/ca/pending (waiting state). 4 steps, not 5.
• Post-approval bank capture lives on /ca/portal/profile (CaProfileEditor); pricing lives on /ca/portal/pricing. CAs cannot accept engagements until both are set — the portal nudges them inline.
• Wireframes bank.html, pricing.html, credentials.html are stale; treat as historical reference until they're refreshed or the spec is intentionally re-aligned.
• Admin moderation flow (Flow 10) unchanged — admin sees the same identity + KYC + specialty payload regardless of where pricing/bank live.
• Affects pillar-ca-portal, ca-category-consultation, ca-category-itr-filing, ca-category-notice-defence, and pillar-admin.

Status

Active.

Sources

• .context/wiki/decisions/* § "2026-06-10 — CA onboarding collapsed to 4 steps; bank + pricing moved post-approval"