Client Intake Form Template
The all-purpose first step for service businesses — who the client is, what winning looks like, and the budget and timeline realities, before your first call.
Welcome — this intake takes about five minutes and makes our first conversation twice as useful. Answer what you can; skip what you can't.
Every service engagement begins with the same conversation: who are you, what do you need, what happens if it works, and can we afford each other. A client intake form runs that conversation while you sleep. Instead of a first call spent on biography, you walk in knowing the business, the goal, and the budget band — and the client walks in feeling like you did your homework, because you did.
What each question buys you. Name and email are the reply channel, kept to two fields so momentum builds before the thinking starts. The business description is deliberately open-ended: how a prospect describes their own company tells you more about how they think than any dropdown could. The services multi-select maps their ask onto your actual menu — including a "not sure yet" lane, because the best engagements often begin with a mislabeled problem. The win question is the heart of the form: clients who can articulate an outcome are ready to buy, clients who cannot need a different first conversation, and now you know which is which before anyone books an hour. Budget and start-date selects are qualification without interrogation — ranges feel safe to answer, and "no number yet" is an honest option that keeps real prospects from bailing. The communication preference sets the relationship's default channel from day one.
What it refuses to ask. No company registration numbers, no ten-question discovery battery, no describe-your-competitors homework. Those belong after an agreement, when goodwill is established and effort is reciprocal. An intake form is a fit filter, not a project brief — overload it and qualified-but-busy prospects quietly close the tab.
Who runs this. Independent consultants link it from their work-with-me page. Agencies use it to keep the pipeline moving between sales hires. Accountants, lawyers, and studios send it after a networking handshake, when "email me some details" would otherwise produce a three-line message containing none of the details. Because the form lives at a shareable link, it also works from an Instagram bio or an email signature — no website required.
Make it yours. Rename the service options to your real offerings and set the budget bands so the lowest one sits at your minimum engagement — that single edit teaches prospects your floor without an awkward sentence. Add a rule in the Logic panel to reveal a follow-up question when a specific service is picked. Turn on email notifications in Settings so new intakes land in your inbox, or point a signed webhook at your CRM so nothing gets retyped. The two-page structure is deliberate: contact details sit on page one, so even an abandoned form leaves a reachable lead in your partial responses — follow up gently and you will be surprised how many finish the conversation live.
Frequently asked questions
Can I see intakes that were started but never finished?
Yes — partial responses are captured automatically, so answers typed before an abandon still appear in your responses view, marked as partial.
How do I get submissions into my CRM?
Point a webhook at your CRM or automation tool — each intake is delivered as JSON the moment it arrives, signed so your endpoint can verify it. For a one-off migration, export everything as CSV.
Can I make the budget question required?
Open the template in the editor, select the budget block, and flip the required toggle. Every field's wording, options, and required state is editable.
Will bots fill this with junk?
Public intake links get Formlark's layered spam protection — a honeypot field, submission-timing checks, and an invisible proof-of-work challenge that appears only when traffic looks automated.