A good client intake form pays for itself the first time a new client answers every question upfront instead of dragging out three follow-up emails. It sets expectations, filters bad-fit leads, and gives your team the context to run a proper kickoff on day one.
This page gives you a free, copy-paste client intake form template you can adapt to any service business — plus industry-specific versions for consultants, agencies, coaches, law firms, and accounting firms. At the bottom you will find a short section on how to turn a static form into an actual intake workflow that collects documents alongside the answers.
The free client intake form template
Copy this into Google Forms, Typeform, Notion, your CRM, or any form builder. The structure is deliberately in sections so you can drop or add fields without breaking the flow.
Section 1 — Contact and company
- Full name
- Phone number
- Company name
- Company website
- Company size (dropdown: 1, 2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201+)
- Your role at the company
Section 2 — About the engagement
- What service are you interested in? (dropdown of your offers)
- What problem are you trying to solve, in your own words?
- Why now? What made today the day you reached out?
- Have you worked with someone on this before? What happened?
- What does success look like in 3 months? In 12 months?
Section 3 — Timeline and budget
- Ideal start date
- Hard deadline (if any) and what happens if it slips
- Budget range for this engagement (dropdown of tiers)
- Who signs off on budget on your side?
Section 4 — Stakeholders and decision making
- Who else is involved in this project on your side?
- Who has final approval on deliverables?
- Preferred communication channel (email, Slack, phone, portal)
- Meeting cadence you prefer (weekly, biweekly, monthly)
Section 5 — Documents and access
- Please upload: signed NDA (if required), company registration, previous vendor contracts or briefs, brand assets, any relevant background documents
- List the systems you will need to give us access to (CRM, analytics, ad accounts, drives)
- Preferred way to share credentials (password manager, secure vault, one-off email)
Section 6 — Anything else
- What is one thing a past vendor did that you never want a vendor to do again?
- Anything else we should know before the kickoff call?
That is the base template. It works for most service businesses without changes. If you want to shorten it, cut sections 4 and 6 for smaller engagements. If you want to lengthen it, add discovery questions specific to your service in section 2.
Industry versions
Consulting client intake form
Consulting projects live on stakeholder access. Front-load it or you will spend the first month scheduling interviews instead of doing the work.
Add these fields to the base template:
- List of stakeholders we will need to interview (name, role, availability window)
- Data room or shared drive we will get read-only access to
- Sponsor on your side who unblocks issues if internal access stalls
- Confidentiality tier for our final deliverable (internal only, board-level, external)
For the full onboarding sequence that follows this form, see the consulting client onboarding checklist.
Marketing agency client intake form
Agencies need brand context and past performance before any creative work starts. If you skip this in the intake, you will discover it in the middle of your first campaign.
Add these fields:
- Upload your brand book, style guide, or tone of voice document
- Upload your top 3 performing pieces of past creative and your bottom 3
- Ad accounts we will need admin access to (Meta Business Manager, Google Ads, LinkedIn, TikTok)
- Analytics access needed (GA4, Search Console, attribution tool)
- List of competitors you benchmark yourself against
- Any words, claims, or angles you cannot use for legal or brand reasons
The marketing agency client onboarding checklist goes deeper on the documents to collect after the form is submitted.
Law firm client intake form
The intake form for a law firm doubles as your conflict-check trigger and your engagement letter starter. Every field matters for the file.
Add these fields:
- Full legal name and any prior names
- Date of birth
- Government-issued ID number and jurisdiction
- Opposing parties (individuals and entities)
- Related parties (co-defendants, insurers, other counsel)
- Prior counsel on this matter (name, firm, dates)
- Type of matter (dropdown: family, real estate, corporate, litigation, immigration, other)
- Upload: government ID, retainer agreement if pre-signed, court documents to date, correspondence with opposing counsel
Once the form is in, use the law firm client intake checklist to move the file through opening.
Accounting and bookkeeping client intake form
Accounting firms need financial history and KYC documents before they can quote a fixed fee, let alone start work.
Add these fields:
- Business structure (sole proprietor, LLC, S-corp, C-corp, partnership, nonprofit)
- Fiscal year end
- Prior-year gross revenue (bracket dropdown)
- Number of monthly transactions (bracket dropdown)
- Accounting software in use (QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, spreadsheet, none)
- Number of employees and contractors on payroll
- Upload: prior 2 years of tax returns, most recent P&L and balance sheet, entity formation documents, EIN letter
The accounting client onboarding checklist lists every document to gather once the intake form is complete.
Coaching client intake form
Coaching intakes are lighter on documents and heavier on self-reflection. The point is to get the client thinking about their goal before session one.
Add these fields:
- What area of your life do you want to focus on (career, business, health, relationships, other)?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with that area today?
- Where do you want that number to be in 6 months?
- What have you already tried and why did it not stick?
- What might get in the way of you doing the work between sessions?
- Preferred session length and frequency
- Time zone and typical availability
For a full coaching-specific onboarding flow, see the coaching client onboarding checklist.
What makes a client intake form actually work
A form that gets skipped or half-filled is worse than no form at all, because it gives your team a false sense that discovery happened. A few rules keep completion rates high.
Keep the required fields short and put the optional ones in a “nice to have” section. People will fill 10 required fields and 15 optional ones. They will bounce on 25 required fields.
Ask for documents inside the form, not in a follow-up email. The best moment to collect a signed NDA, an ID, or a brand book is while the client is already in the mindset of onboarding. Every day between the form and the document request halves the completion rate.
Explain why you are asking for the sensitive fields. “Budget range” and “government ID” both get pushback if they show up unexplained. A single line — “we ask for budget so we can propose the right tier, not the most expensive one” — doubles the answer rate.
Show progress. A multi-step form with a progress bar completes at a much higher rate than one long scrolling page. Break it into 3–5 short screens.
Send an automatic confirmation with next steps. The moment the form is submitted, the client should see or receive “here is what happens in the next 48 hours.” Silence after submission is where trust leaks out.
From static form to real intake workflow
A form on its own solves the discovery half. The other half — collecting the documents, chasing the missing ones, and getting sign-off on the engagement letter — is where most intakes get stuck.
The upgrade is to run intake as a workflow, not a form:
- Client fills the intake form
- Same portal asks them to upload the required documents (ID, NDA, brand assets, prior contracts)
- Automatic reminders go out for anything missing
- Your team is notified as each piece lands, with everything organized under one contact record
- Engagement letter is sent for e-signature inside the same flow
That is what Superdocu does: a branded portal where new clients answer the questions, upload the documents, and sign the contract in a single guided flow. You see who is stuck, on which step, without opening a spreadsheet. There is no credit card required to try it, and the branding is included on every plan.
If you are building the workflow yourself, take a look at the client onboarding plan template for the full 30-60-90 sequence that follows the intake form.
Client intake form vs. client onboarding checklist
Both come up in the same conversations, and they are not the same thing.
- A client intake form is the questionnaire the client fills out to give you the context and documents you need to start. It happens once, at the very beginning.
- A client onboarding checklist is the list of tasks your team runs through after intake, to move the client from “signed” to “fully operational.” It happens over days or weeks.
You need both. The intake form is the input; the onboarding checklist is what your team does with that input. For the checklist half, most industries have a ready-made version in the Superdocu blog, including freelance, web design, bookkeeping, and photography versions.
What goes wrong (and how to fix it)
A few failure modes repeat across almost every intake process.
The form is too long, so nobody finishes it. Fix: cut required fields ruthlessly. Move anything that is nice-to-know into an optional section or into the kickoff call.
Documents get requested in a separate email a week later. Fix: put the document upload inside the same intake flow. If the client is answering questions, they are already in intake mode.
Answers sit in a Typeform export nobody looks at. Fix: route submissions into whatever system your team actually opens every morning. A form that lives in a silo is a form that lives in a graveyard.
The intake form and the engagement letter are separate steps. Fix: send the engagement letter as the last step of the intake flow, with e-signature built in. One motion, not three.
No confirmation, no next step, no owner. Fix: assign one team member as the owner of every new intake, and send an automatic email the moment the form is complete telling the client exactly what happens next.
Frequently asked questions
What should be included in a client intake form?
At a minimum: contact and company information, a description of the problem or engagement, timeline and budget, decision-makers, and any documents required to start work. Anything more depends on your industry — accounting firms need financial history, law firms need conflict-check data, agencies need brand assets.
How long should a client intake form be?
Short enough that the client can finish it in one sitting, usually 10–15 minutes. Break it into 3–5 short screens rather than one long page, and mark anything non-essential as optional so the required section stays tight.
Should a client intake form collect documents?
Yes. The best moment to collect an ID, NDA, brand book, or prior contract is while the client is already in intake mode. Requesting documents in a separate email a week later can cut completion rates in half.
What is the difference between a client intake form and an onboarding checklist?
The intake form is the client-facing questionnaire that gives you context to start work. The onboarding checklist is the internal list of tasks your team runs through after intake to move the client to fully operational. You need both.
Can I automate my client intake process?
Yes. Modern tools let you send a single link where the client fills the form, uploads the required documents, and signs the engagement letter in one flow — with automatic reminders for anything missing. Superdocu is built for exactly this workflow.
Start using your intake form today
Copy the template above, drop it into whatever tool you already use, and send it to your next lead before the first call. Every question answered upfront is one you do not have to ask on a call, and every document collected in the intake flow is one that will not delay the kickoff.
If you want the form, the document collection, and the engagement letter to live in one branded flow instead of stitched across four tools, start a free 7-day Superdocu trial. No credit card required, and your logo is on the portal from day one.