Base4NFDI is a joint initiative within NFDI (National Research Data Infrastructure Germany), a bottom-up and cross-disciplinary effort to improve research data management and building on 26 communities organised in consortia. Base4NFDI creates a framework for a user-driven and quality-assured portfolio of basic services. It builds on existing solutions that are interoperable with the EOSC infrastructure and follow its guidelines. Once a potential basic service has passed the formal acceptance criteria, it enters the initialisation phase. Several steps need to be taken and documented to complete this phase. This document provides practical guidlines to complete the required documentation during the initialisation phase and complements the more formal requirements for completion of the initialisation phase.