Client Intake Form for Word (Free Download)

A client intake form is one of the first steps in connecting a potential customer to a service provider. It’s used across several industries, from professional services to legal, real estate and cosmetology. Download this free client intake form for Word to ensure all essential information is collected.

What Is a Client Intake Form?

A client intake form is a document used to ask potential customers questions to determine if they’re a good fit for a service. This helps businesses gather information about a customer or business before starting a working relationship with them. The client intake form also introduces the customer to the business providing the service.

Not only can a business discover if the customer is a good fit, but it can discern the customer’s pain points. This provides a pathway to resolving those problems and cementing the relationship between the two parties. A client intake form can also act as a questionnaire before a sales call or be used in the onboarding process.

Businesses can use a client intake form as a digital file or as a physical copy such as the client intake form template. How the client intake form is delivered to a potential customer is less important as it’s the first step in working successfully with them.

ProjectManager's client intake form for Word — *Free client intake form for Word*

Why Use a Client Intake Form?

Client intake forms are versatile, and this document is a mainstay for client management teams. It provides a service that a customer wants and ensures the customer has partnered with the right provider. As a result, businesses can save time and focus on what’s important during a client kickoff, as it streamlines the onboarding process.

A client intake form also helps create better estimates of the scope of the client’s projects. That’s because the client intake form captures the pertinent information that helps the business understand its customer’s goals. This reduces risks that can create problems later in the project. From the start, everyone knows what the customer wants and how the business can provide that service and the client intake form template helps structure the project.

Once the client and business have a mutual understanding and the project is contracted, the information collected informs the project schedule, budget and more. Project management software is instrumental in translating the client intake form into an actionable project plan.

ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software that has powerful Gantt charts to organize tasks, resources and costs. More than just a basic visual timeline, our Gantt charts link all four types of task dependencies to avoid costly delays and filter for the critical path to identify essential tasks. Then, use it to set a baseline to track planned progress against actual progress in real time to keep the project on schedule. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Gantt chart in ProjectManager for client management projects — ProjectManager offers the tools for in-depth client project management. Learn more

Who Uses a Client Intake Form Template?

As noted above, the client intake form applies to multiple industries. Anyone who works with clients or customers will find value in using this free client intake form template. Whether they’re working in professional services, real estate, event planning, construction, digital marketing or accounting firms, professionals use the client intake form template to ensure the business and its customers are the right fit.

The potential client will fill out the client intake form and detail what they’re looking for in a service. This helps determine if the client and the business are a good fit. Naturally, the other individual using the client intake form is a business representative. They’ll review the information on the client intake form template to see if the potential customer is the right customer for the service they can provide.

What Information Does the Client Intake Form Gather?

Download the free client intake form for Word for a fully customizable document. Companies can add their logo to the top of the template, make changes and add specific information.

The client intake form template has the basic details that every client intake form needs. It starts with the customer information. Here, the customer or client can add their name, address, preferred method of contact and their business. Users can add specific information to tailor the client intake form template to their industry.

Beneath that is a box where the client can detail what they want from the business initiating the client intake form template. There’s space set aside to answer this question and it should be as thorough as possible for both parties to see if it’s a good fit.

Under that is another box that captures how the customer heard about the business. This isn’t necessarily important to whether the company can deliver the service or project defined by the customer. However, it can serve the company in collecting valuable data that helps market it to the right target audience.

The last line of the client intake form template is a space for the customer to sign and date the document.

Other Client Service Management Templates

There are many service management templates available from our over 100 free project management templates for Excel and Word. Download free templates that can help with every project phase and across industries. Below are a few free templates that can be used with a client intake form template to deliver services to customers.

Gantt Chart Template

A Gantt chart is a scheduling tool that is divided into two pieces. On the left is a spreadsheet and on the right is a timeline that shows the entire project on one page. Use this free Gantt chart template for Excel where tasks, start and end dates are listed on the spreadsheet, which then automatically populates the timeline.

Workload Analysis Template

Service delivery to the client requires more than a schedule. It means managing a workforce and evenly distributing their tasks to keep everyone working at capacity. This free workload analysis template for Excel lists all team members by name and hourly rate. Managers can enter their availability and allocate work hours to each team member. Managers can now monitor resource utilization rates and costs.

Timesheet Template

Timesheets are excellent tools for capturing employee work hours and streamlining payroll, but they can also track labor costs to help keep to the project budget. Use this free timesheet template for Excel to capture the name, department and hourly rate of everyone on the team. Then list their hours worked over the week, which can give managers insights into whether the project is progressing as planned.

How ProjectManager Helps With Client Intake and Management

All those templates, whether for Gantt charts, workload analysis or timesheets, will only help managers to a point. Then, they’ll get frustrated. These are static documents, after all, which are poor collaborative tools and pull people away from more important work as they must manually input data. Project management software can break the chains of Excel spreadsheets with greater efficiency. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software that has Gantt charts to schedule work, resource management features to keep teams productive and various tools to monitor and report on project progress and performance.

Balance Workload With Resource Tools

When teams are onboarded, managers can set their availability. That makes it easy to see who’s on vacation, has PTO or whether it’s a holiday. Managers can assign team members tasks from the Gantt chart. Once resources have been allocated, managers can go to the team page or the color-coded workload page. Here they have an overview of everyone’s allocation and can quickly determine who is over- or underallocated. Then managers can balance the team’s workload from that page to keep everyone working at capacity.

Monitor Progress, Costs and More

Planning and managing resources set up the project for success, but things happen. To avoid falling behind schedule or overspending, managers can get a high-level overview of the project by toggling over to the real-time project or portfolio dashboard, which automatically collects data once a baseline is set. Easy-to-read graphs and charts show key performance indicators (KPIs) such as time, cost and workload. There are also customizable status and portfolio reports as well as reports on variance, workload and timesheets. Our secure timesheets can also provide a window into labor costs to help projects stay on budget.

Client Intake Form