Last Updated on October 30, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
The first impression always matters in business. If you’re a service provider, you want to provide the best onboarding experience for your clients.
To make this happen, you need a client intake form. Aside from helping you collect clients’ personal information and reasons for seeking your services, these forms help create an effective client relationship.
A client intake form is a must-have if you’re in any of these industries:
- Healthcare
- Education
- Accounting
- Legal
- Marketing
However, creating a client intake form from scratch could be daunting, especially if you’re new to the business.
In this article, you’ll have access to 30 free client intake form templates in Word, Excel, and PDF formats that you can easily download, tweak and use for your customers’ information intake.
Chapter One: Client Intake Form Templates for Microsoft Word
1. Small Business Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
Are you just starting a business and wondering where or how to start with the delivery of services?
This small-business client intake form template can be used to capture your client’s valuable information. It doesn’t restrict you by sector or department. All you need to do is to personalize the document by replacing the logo, color, and name.
2. Counseling Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
Working with people with emotional and psychological issues would be difficult if you didn’t know them well. That’s why the counseling client intake form is essential. You can determine their reasons for seeking counseling, the severity of the problem, and whether or not the problem has been treated before.
The counseling client intake form template lets the counselor easily connect with the clients by identifying the person, his or her needs, and how the counselor can be of help.
3. Patient Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The patient-client intake form template will help you as a medical practitioner gather the information for the patient’s initial assessment, prioritize treatment, and assign a medical consultant to provide the relevant medical attention to the client.
It also features sections for new patient information, emergency contact information, insurance information, referrals and supplementary treatment, and health problems and symptoms, among others.
4. Real Estate Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
When it comes to property purchase, the real estate professional must get the appropriate information before actuating the property inspection or purchase.
The real estate client intake form template will allow you to collect the property address, client status, either seller or buyer, contract acceptance and closing dates, buyer or seller contact information, realtors, mortgage brokers and banks, and title company information.
5. Tax Preparation Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
It’s important to collect appropriate data when it involves finances.
The tax preparation client intake form template lets you collect your client’s name, and input detailed information about their personal information. It also includes their dependents, wages or salaries, sold investments, and other tax-related information.
Chapter Two: Client Intake Form Templates for Excel
6. Business/Corporate Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
Business and corporate clients are very busy individuals. They don’t have the time to engage in long conversations unless it is very important.
If you serve that client base, you can use this business/corporate intake form template to gather important client information like business name, related companies, and contact information; their business-specific details (e.g., bank, primary legal counsel, etc.); and services they want you to provide.
7. Salon/Spa Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The salon and spa client intake form template helps you collect information such as the date, client name, contact information, and any health or beauty-related details as needed. Your new clients will be added to your system immediately.
This can be used by your receptionists, masseuses, estheticians, and hair and nail stylists. It can also include essential facts about your salon or spa’s services and brand.
8. Simple Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The simple client intake form template is easy and universal. It is not sector-specific, so you can adapt it for your business and add some unique details.
Use this template to record your customers’ information upon initial contact for a variety of business objectives. You can also save and share it with your employees and departments to keep everyone up to date on new client information.
Chapter Three: Client Intake Form Templates PDF
9. Legal Advice Service Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The legal advice service client intake form template form allows you to collect your clients’ information before you start advising them.
This template is a perfect guide for making your form. By adding a few peculiarities and branding, you can create a personalized legal advice service client intake form.
10. Marketing Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The marketing client intake form template lets you capture and complete your clients’ information and their needs before you commence any marketing activity. It’s a must for all your potential clients as this helps a lot in aligning expectations.
You can use it to collect all the necessary information such as the greatest challenge that your client’s business is facing, and what has brought them online success in the past.
11. General Client Intake Form Template
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The general client intake form template is useful irrespective of your sector. It allows for easy access to your clients whenever you need to get quick updates.
12. Bankruptcy Client Intake Form Template
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The bankruptcy client intake form template is designed for clients contemplating bankruptcy. This will help you compel them to reveal crucial information relating to their financial situation, assets, and personal situations. It also helps you avoid delays in the bankruptcy consultation and filing procedure.
14. Entity Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The entity client intake form template is useful for clients who represent corporations and organizations. The template lets you collect information such as the company’s business kind, legal entity type, contact information, and office address.
It also includes the type of advice or consulting services that the firm needs, as well as the intended outcomes and results for the services sought, which will be specified in the form.
14. Estate Planning Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The estate planning client intake form template is for those that own real estate and want to safeguard it. This helps you as an estate planning consultant or attorney to provide estate planning services to assist real estate property owners in managing and dispersing their assets when they pass away.
15. Landscaping Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The landscape client intake form template allows the landscape consultants to collect information about their clients, such as their expected goals, project budget constraints, type of consultation service required, preferred tree and plant designs, and whether or not the client will require an annual garden and landscape maintenance service from the consultant.
16. Law Office Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The law office client intake form template is specifically designed for clients who require attorneys for a court trial or other legal concerns. As an attorney, you will require your client to fill out this client intake form.
The information provided will guide and determine the processes of standing in for the clients. Essentially, the client provides contact information as well as the level of urgency with which he or she needs assistance.
17. Medicaid Waiver Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The Medicaid waiver client intake form template is a special type of healthcare program that is available to those who are qualified in certain states. This template helps you to collect data that includes the client’s Medicaid number and the name of the person designated as the client’s authorized representative.
It can also include the client’s physician’s medical diagnosis for the client’s disease or medical condition, as well as the kind of diet suggested by the physician.
18. Pediatric Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The pediatric client intake form template is mostly used by massage therapists and clinics that treat newborns frequently.
You can use it to learn about a child’s allergies, prescriptions by his or her doctor, the child’s physical and mental health history, and any other medical information that should be shared with the therapists. It also includes a parental consent form which signals the parent’s acceptance for the therapist to massage or have the child undergo specific procedures.
19. Sexual Abuse Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The sexual abuse client intake form template is for clients who are victims of events such as rape. It is for professionals to help the victims in moving on and continuing to live their lives following traumatic events.
For this to happen, the professional needs to understand the worries and difficulties the client faces. Since there was also a crime, minute details will need to be taken in order to assist the client in reporting the crime.
This template includes the client’s basic information, event data, network contacts, and an incident report.
20. Confidential Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The confidential client intake form template is for clients with certain confidentiality in their health or situation. This is to make sure that you’re able to provide them with a better capacity to relate to others in your team, and everyone has a better knowledge of interacting with them. This will give your client a sense of self in terms of personal values and objectives.
21. Therapeutic Massage Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The therapeutic massage client intake form template is created to help your clients get the finest service from your team. It is for clients who are particular about unwinding after a long week or a strenuous exercise.
22. Case Management Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The case management client intake form template enables you to collect client data that you can utilize to examine, plan, execute, coordinate, monitor, and evaluate the alternatives and services needed to satisfy their health and human service requirements.
It includes information about the client’s former appointment with a different case manager (if that exists), and it also covers information about the client’s address, the client’s urgent needs to increase engagement and retention in services.
23. Medical Client/Adult New Patient Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The medical client/adult new patient intake form template helps healthcare professionals to gather demographic, social, and clinical data, permission forms, insurance, payments, and other essential pieces of information from new and returning patients during the patient intake process, and the names of each doctor and their specialties.
24. New Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The new client intake form template helps you to gather the information of your new clients. It involves their personal data and how you can reach them should they not show up again after the first visit. It should also collect information about the reason for the client’s visit and how they heard about your business.
25. Coaching Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The coaching client intake form template is used to gather information about your prospective coaching clients.
It also includes business-related questions such as who their ideal clients are, a clear vision and mission statement, and the favorite part of their business.
26. Esthetician Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The esthetician client intake form template captures information about the contact, personal, and most importantly the civil and health information of the esthetician clients.
This information can include details of how the client cares for their skin, why they take care of their skin, their alcohol intake level, and if they’re pregnant or not, etc.
27. Agency Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The agency-client intake form template captures information that clients provide before you start working with them at your agency.
For example, if you run a B2B content marketing agency, you can use the client intake form to understand why the B2B brand wants to work with you, what values and beliefs they live by in their company, and how they’re currently acquiring customers and clients for their business.
28. Client Personal Injury Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The client personal injury intake form template captures the client’s personal, contact, work, and health information. It also collects information about the accident, the extent of the injury to the client, vehicle details, and health insurance.
29. Consulting Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The consulting client intake form template collects contact and project overview information about the client and their business.
It also includes a requirement about what they are passionate about and the short-term and long-term goals of their business.
30. Non-Profit Client Intake Form Template
Click here to download this Client Intake Form Template
The non-profit client intake form template captures the details of the impact project they are working on, and the metrics outlined to measure the impact.
It also includes details of what the non-profit organization requests, the income and expense evaluation, and details of future direction.
Chapter Four: What Is a Client Intake Form?
When a client searches for a service to use, they are looking for the right fit for them. You might also need to ascertain whether the potential client is the right fit for you and your company as well. Though they already have an idea of the value they will get by coming to you, understanding them better will give you the power to create personalized service for them. When clients get personalized service, they feel valued and respected.
To capture this client information, you use the client intake form.
The client intake form is a questionnaire-like document that organizations, agencies, and businesses use to collect customers’ data before onboarding them as clients. It asks a customer to submit the information that will assist a company in assessing if the client is a suitable fit for its services as well as develop a plan to meet the prospect’s requirements, interests, and pain points.
That way, you can align expectations with your clients before onboarding them. Also, it will streamline your communication with the client, and help you focus more on delivering outstanding services for them.
Chapter Five: Benefits of Using a Client Intake Form Template
As much as the client intake form helps you access your clients fast and deliver tailored services to them, it’s difficult to create one from the ground up. This is because you might not know the questions to ask or information to gather, and the time you’d take to create them might be a luxury.
In a situation like this, it’s best for you to use the client intake form template. These templates are already done for you—an editable client intake form that you can select based on your industry and desired format, add your company brand and additional questions, and begin to use almost immediately.
Here are some of the benefits of using a client intake form template.
- It’s easy to use
In business, time is an essential commodity. The faster you’re able to sift through your clients’ polls and select valuable clients, the more profitable your company.
Client intake form templates make this possible as they are easy to use and they make finding clients that fit your business possible. Also, working with templates makes you ask the right, important, and relevant questions so you don’t have to bore your prospective clients during the onboarding process.
- It saves money and time
If you don’t use a client intake template, you might end up gathering your clients’ information through endless email communication between you, the client, and the staff attending to them. That way, you’ll waste money, time, and resources.
With the client intake form template, either filled online or offline, your clients provide the information you need at once, and everyone on your team that interacts with that client gets access to it. In the end, no one has to ask embarrassing questions when dealing with clients.
- It increases flexibility and productivity
With client intake form templates, you and your team will have increased flexibility and productivity. Instead of sending emails to you and asking for a better grasp of the clients’ information, employees can immediately connect the dots by following an update or additional information that one of your employees has officially added.
That way, service delivery goes very fast and projects get completed to clients’ satisfaction.
- It helps reduce errors
Client intake form templates help you to create high-quality client intake forms and display high professionalism.
For instance, thinking that you know it all, you create a client intake form and ask questions that are not relevant to your business or industry. Don’t you think the prospective client will perceive you as unprofessional? You wouldn’t want a situation whereby your clients begin to tell you the questions you’re supposed to ask them as a professional.
The clients’ intake form templates allow you to reduce error and collect the right information that guides your service delivery.
Chapter Six: Elements of a Client Intake Form
Whether you want to create your client intake form from scratch or you’re using a client intake form template, there are some key elements that the form must-have. Without this, your intake form will be termed as incomplete and unprofessional.
They include:
- Basic contact and company information
Your client intake form will be null if you don’t capture your clients’ contact information and company information if available. How would you reach out to them in the future if you don’t have those details?
This part of the form should include your client’s name, their contact details like phone number and residential address. It should also include the principal contact at that company, their preferred contact methods, their job, the size of their company, and other logistical elements that provide you with a high-level summary of what the company looks like.
- Clients’ job and description
After you’ve covered the basic contact and company information, the next is to dig a little deeper about the client’s job specifics. Let the clients talk about their business and the products and services they sell.
This data may provide you with a lot of useful information that will help you determine whether a customer is a good fit for your company or not.
Also, this will help you to provide a better idea of their company’s identity and attract them to your business by mirroring their terms and approach to relationship building.
- Client pain points
Instead of struggling to assume what your client’s pain points are, or trying to connect it with your unique value proposition, the client intake form allows you to hear from the horse’s mouth.
By allowing your clients to express what their most pressing challenges and concerns are, will help you think straightforwardly to provide them with adequate solutions.
Answering those questions will fully equip you to assist them in overcoming those obstacles.
- Client’s goals
If your clients can tell you their problems and what they expect as solutions, your job as a solutions provider is half done. At this point, all you need to complete the other half is to align their expectations with what you’ll deliver, then the job is done.
Now you can fully place your company at the heart of your potential client’s future and operations. Your client’s goals provide the most definitive picture of the hopes and expectations they’ll bring to your professional relationship.
So, if they express grandiose, lofty aspirations in this area that you won’t be able to deliver on, you’ll know you need to have a candid discussion about what your company can achieve for them.
- Information about the budget
You can’t get any business off the ground if the budget is not clearly stated. This lets you easily achieve the client’s issues, goals, and vision.
It’s okay for the clients to state the range of their budget. When they do, you can now plan the resource allocations and outline a strategy to deliver the project.
- Additional information
What more do you need to know about your potential clients? Is there any information they have that you didn’t ask for? Is there anything more they’d want to know from you besides that?
This can serve as a jumping-off point for such discussions, as it’s broad enough to fill up any gaps left by the preceding parts.
Chapter Seven: How To Create a Simple Client Intake Form: A Step-by-Step Guide
If you know the right way, creating a simple intake form is easy, particularly when you’re starting without any template. All you need is to understand the step-by-step process of going about the task.
Here’s a look at how to create a simple client intake form.
Step 1: Choose a client intake form tool
From SweetProcess to Wufoo, Google Docs, Formstack, and Jotform, there are several tools that you can use to create your client intake form. You only need to select a budget-friendly one that is easy to use, and that you can integrate with the tools your company already uses.
A good client intake form tool should allow you to customize and brand your form as much as possible. This involves creating a name, logo, and company image, as well as adding form instructions to it.
Also, it should allow you to add different question formats, and set questions as required or optional.
Step 2: Decide when you need to use it
A client intake form is useful in two instances: either for client prospecting or onboarding.
When using your client intake form for client prospecting, you quickly gather useful details that help you qualify a lead and determine the type of service that will work best for them. Doing this lets you learn about your prospect’s aspirations and expectations.
And when used for client onboarding, you’ll utilize your client intake form to delve further into your client’s wants and goals, as well as gather necessary materials before you start their work.
Step 3: Ask the right questions
This section is important as it’s a reflection on your professional know-how. Asking the right questions indicates that you know your onus and you’ll likely serve the clients better.
Figure out the questions to ask, and make double sure that you ask them accordingly. For instance, asking budget questions before asking questions about understanding your client’s pain points might seem uncoordinated.
Should you provide a service-based or project-based solution, make sure that your questions are tied toward understanding your clients, their challenges, and how you will help them with their problems.
Step 4: Include other elements in your form
Aside from the questions asked, you want to add your company’s uniqueness to your client’s intake form. This begins with your brand logo, color, and font. It stretches further to include other things aside from those.
Such information could be the contact information of a close individual at the bottom of the form, and a short note about your company’s response time, communication channels, and the next steps to expect.
Step 5: Share the client intake form
Now that you’ve created your client intake form, edit and test it with your employees. Next is to determine how you’ll share the form with your clients.
You can share it online or offline when your client visits or host it on your website. But when you do, ensure that you don’t overload website visitors with too many form options. Instead, have a single form to respond to what your prospects want to do with it.
Chapter Eight: Tools and Software You Can Use For Client Intake Form Templates
SweetProcess
SweetProcess makes documenting standard operating procedures (SOPs) easy and efficient.
Take, for instance, if you run an email marketing agency, you can create specific procedures that your employees can follow when sending an email on a client’s behalf.
That way, they’ll always follow the process to the tee, even if you’re not there.
With SweetProcess, you can add the steps list to a procedure as shown below:
And once done, you’ll have an SOP diagram that looks like this:
Once you have multiple procedures in place, you can also use SweetProcess to manage the process.
For example, a content marketing agency has multiple procedures they must complete during the work process.
Let’s say that the procedures include:
- Keyword research
- Content creation
- Editing and proofreading
- Graphics design
- Content distribution
You can use SweetProcess to create a process for the delivery of the service to your clients.
Here’s what that looks like:
You can also assign tasks in a process or procedure to a team in your company or to specific individuals in a team.
As you can see, SweetProcess is a robust business management process software. It has a 14-day free trial and the subscription costs $99 a month for a team with up to 20 active members.
Google Forms
Google Forms is a tool that allows you to create new surveys and questionnaires. It also makes it easy for you to collaborate with your team.
With this tool, you can create client intake forms templates, brand them with your company logo, and it’s completely free.
Typeform
Typeform allows you to create easy-to-complete questionnaires and surveys that your client wants to participate in. The drag-and-drop builder feature and templates let you create your client intake form.
Typeform subscription includes business, plus, and basic plans, and they are billed at a monthly cost of $83, $50, and $25 respectively.
Formstack
Formstack lets you build custom forms that you can use to collect your clients’ information and better understand their requirements, difficulties, and ambitions.
It also allows you to turn the information into bespoke documents like proposals, contracts, and more. This tool costs $50 per month for a starter plan, $83 a month for teams, and $208 for pro.
Wufoo
Wufoo is a client intake form builder that directly allows you to upload to your website or privately share with your team and clients. It is a cloud-based tool that can be integrated with other online tools.
It has a free version and the premium account is in four categories: Starter, Professional, Advanced and Ultimate, and they cost $14, $29, $74, $183 per month respectively.
IntakeQ
IntakeQ is a client intake form tool that helps you to reduce paperwork in your intake process and enhance customer onboarding. It has a questionnaire analytics feature that crawls the aggregate clients’ data and provides you with fresh insights on your practice and clients.
Should you want to go anonymous with the tool, it allows for that as well. You can use IntakeQ with a 14-day free trial and the subscription costs $49.90 per month.
Flywheel
Flywheel is a WordPress-managed hosting service for creative businesses and designers. But it does more than that. Aside from the user-friendly dashboard, it makes managing your sites, collaborating with coworkers and clients, and focusing on company growth a breeze.
The pricing ranges from $113 per month for freelance packages and $273 per month for agency packages.
Canva
Many people think that Canva is strictly for graphics designers. If this is keeping you away from Canva, you’re missing out a great deal. Canva’s drag-and-drop feature and layouts allow you to design, share and print business cards, logos, presentations, and most importantly, clients’ intake forms.
You can collect information about your customers’ backgrounds, health, challenges, and what they want assistance with. It’s free, but its Pro version costs $12.99 per month, and the Enterprise costs $150 per month.
Chapter Nine: Create and Manage Your Client Intake Form Using SweetProcess
SweetProcess allows you to create and manage your clients’ intake forms seamlessly. Aside from that, it provides your staff with all of the information they require to do their tasks correctly. Once your clients provide their information via the intake form, your team needs no recurring emails and/or guessing—they have all the information to accurately do their jobs in one place.
Using SweetProcess, you can build a simple form within the steps of a procedure. After creating the procedure, you can also add form fields to it by editing the procedure. Let’s walk you through exactly how that works.
Step 1: Click on the “Add Form Field” in the procedure that you’re editing.
Step 2: From the drop-down menu, choose the type of form field that you’d like to create.
For this example, we chose the “Type Field” option. You can choose a different form field depending on the kind of question you want to ask your client. Since you’re creating a client intake form, you can add as many form fields as you want. Click on the “Add Form Field” button and choose the type of form field you want to add in each case.
Step 3: Name the form field you’ve added above.
Step 4: Save the changes to each step by clicking on the “Finished Editing” button.
Step 5: Click on the “Approve” button once you’ve made all the changes. That way the procedure will go live.
If you have don’t have permission to approve a procedure, you can always request for approval by clicking on the “Request Approval” button as shown below.
Once the procedure is approved, your client intake form will be live and visible to your client.
In SweetProcess, you can also reorder the form fields within a procedure, at any time. Here’s exactly how to make that happen:
Step 1: Click on the 3-vertical-dots button at the top right of the form field you want to reorder.
Step 2: Once you do, a drop-down menu will show up. Click on “Move field up” to take it upward, or “Move field down” to take it downward. To delete the form field completely, click on “Remove field.”
That’s all!
Some of our clients who are using SweetProcess for this specific use case and many more.
For instance, at Mudd Advertising, Dave had a significant duty when he joined the company to lead its digital efforts. The company structure was out of place and the procedures were disorganized. He understood fully well that allowing things to continue that way would result in chaos.
When he found SweetProcess, he realized how proper documentation could help instill efficiency in their work process.
He understood that employees have a responsibility to be productive at work, and there is so much more they can do than rely simply on their own abilities.
Using SweetProcess, he created collaborative efforts that thrive in the workplace. The outcomes are outstanding and consistent when everyone follows specified standard processes.
In his words, “The buying decision process was basically me knowing that I had to do something that wasn’t going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that would get the job done, that would allow us to move quickly on changing, modifying (and) creating processes. Once I found SweetProcess, comparing it to the other options that were out there, I made the decision myself and said, Hey, I’m going to get this because we absolutely need it.”
Aside from helping you to capture client’s data in one place using the client intake form, SweetProcess has a quick access to files’ searchability feature that helps businesses run smoother.
Zac from Cullen Insurance Agency explained how SweetProcess brings ease to finding files that could get lost in the shuffle.
He said: “We tried to file it inside of a table of contents and tried to make that work correctly, but that was a problem because as new processes were added, we had to figure out where they were input, and there was really no searchable thing other than search on all the Word docs for keywords.”
In addition to that, they utilized SweetProcess for their cloud-based remote access. Due to their limited accessibility, on-premise workflow solutions were becoming less popular. They made procedures available remotely as it was critical for efficiency as remote and virtual work became more popular.
SweetProcess also improves process updates as well. Authorized individuals may make synchronized changes with little risk of forgetting or making mistakes.
You can get started with a 14-day free trial of SweetProcess to create and manage your company’s client intake forms.
Conclusion:
Client intake form templates make business operations run smoothly and help business owners find balance in their work lives.
This is because while you should spend time upfront talking to clients about their needs and how your solution solves their problems, you might waste time and resources in that process.
What if you request your prospective clients to complete the client intake form then have one of your employees follow up with additional questions to better understand the client’s pain points and aspirations? Wouldn’t that be great?
With client intake form templates, you’ll collect your client’s data, and never spend extra time each week responding to interminable email threads or pursuing missing information or materials from clients long after they’ve agreed to provide them.
Want to know the client intake form templates to use for your company? Click here to download the templates relevant to your industry.
