Coaching intake forms

Coaching intake forms are structured questionnaires a new client completes before the first session, covering goals, context, background and consent. In Exantur they are built from reusable templates, completed in the client portal, and stored against the client record alongside their program, goals and notes.

When you invite a coachee, they are guided through an intake that reflects the quality of the coaching that follows, no attachments to download, no forms lost in an inbox. The client completes it in their own portal, and you have what you need before the first conversation.

Build the intake around how you actually work. Ask the questions that matter for your approach, from goals and context to consent and background, and reuse the same form for every new client or tailor it per program.

Because the form is composed from blocks, you are not locked into a fixed template someone else designed. A career coach and a health coach need very different opening questions, and both can shape an intake that fits, then keep refining it. When you find a better question, you change it once and every future client gets the improved version.

Intake responses are attached to the client record, not buried in a separate tool. When you open a client, their intake sits alongside their program, goals and notes, part of the same organized history.

This matters most in the first session. Instead of re-asking what someone already wrote down, you arrive already knowing their situation, which frees the opening conversation to go deeper rather than repeat groundwork. Months later, the original intake is still there as a baseline you can point back to when you review how far the work has come.

The same builder that shapes an intake also builds worksheets you assign to a client. Compose a form from blocks, headings, text, number fields, media and a signature field, and send it to a coachee to complete in their portal. Because a signature can be part of the form, a consent statement or coaching agreement can be signed off at intake rather than chased over email, and everything comes back attached to the client record.

A useful intake usually covers a handful of areas: what the client wants to work on and why now, relevant context and history, any prior coaching or therapy, practical logistics such as availability and preferred format, and the consent statements your practice needs. Keep it focused. An intake that runs to forty questions gets abandoned, while a tight, well-ordered one gets completed and gives you the signal that matters.

A practical rule is to ask only what you will actually use in the coaching. If a question would not change how you prepare or what you explore in the first session, it is probably noise. The point of the form is to start the relationship informed, not to build a dossier.

Intake is also the natural moment to handle consent, because it is the first thing a client does and it is documented. A consent statement can be a field in the form, signed as part of completing it, so agreement to how you handle their data is captured rather than assumed. Since responses are stored in the EU, encrypted, and isolated per organization with row-level security, sensitive answers a client gives at the start are held in the same protected environment as the rest of the coaching record.