What Should Your Client Intake Form Actually Ask?

A good intake form collects exactly what you need to serve a new client well -- no more, no less. Too many fields and people abandon the form. Too few and you're chasing information by phone for the next week.

Here's what each section of a well-designed intake form should accomplish.

Contact and Demographics

This is the foundation: name, date of birth, phone, email, address. Boring but essential. You need to know who this person is and how to reach them.

Keep it tight. You probably don't need a fax number in 2026. If you need an emergency contact, ask for it. If you don't, skip it.

The Presenting Need

Why is this person coming to you? This is the most important section of the form and the one that requires the most thought in how you design it.

Open-ended text fields work well here because clients describe their situation in their own words, which often reveals context that multiple-choice options miss. You might supplement with a dropdown for broad categories ("New patient visit," "Follow-up," "Specific concern") to help with triage, but don't over-structure this section.

Relevant History

What context do you need to serve this person effectively? For healthcare, this means medical history, current medications, allergies, and past procedures. For legal services, it might be case history. For financial advisors, it's current financial situation and goals.

The key word is "relevant." A dermatology practice doesn't need a detailed surgical history from 15 years ago. A family practice does. Design this section for your specialty, not for a generic template.

Healthcare-specific field types make a real difference here. Structured medication lists, allergy fields with severity indicators, and condition checkboxes are much more useful than a blank text area that says "list your medications."

Screening and Risk Factors

These are the questions that protect both you and the client. Depending on your field:

• Contraindications for proposed treatments
• Accessibility needs
• Mental health screenings
• Insurance eligibility verification
• Conflict-of-interest checks

Use conditional logic so these questions only appear when relevant. If a patient indicates no allergies, don't show them five follow-up fields about allergy details.

Consent and Agreements

Policies, privacy notices, terms of service, treatment consent. These need to be on the form, clearly stated, and acknowledged with a signature or checkbox.

E-signature fields handle this digitally and create a clear record of consent with a timestamp -- much more defensible than a paper signature that might get filed incorrectly or lost.

What Not to Include

Every field you add reduces your completion rate. Before including a field, ask yourself: "Will we use this information in the first week of working with this client?" If the answer is no, save it for later.

You can always collect additional information in follow-up forms or during the first visit. The intake form's job is to gather enough to get started, not to document everything about a person's entire history.

Setting the Tone

Your intake form is often the first interaction a client has with your practice after deciding to work with you. A clean, well-organized form with clear explanations and a professional design signals that you run a tight operation. A cluttered, confusing form with 80 fields signals the opposite.

Design your intake form for the client, not for your filing system. The data will end up in the same place either way -- but the client's experience of providing it makes a lasting impression.