The client onboarding questionnaire template

48 intake questions worth asking, and the reason each one earns its place.

Download Markdown Download CSV (Sheets / Excel)Free · no email required

A client onboarding questionnaire is the structured set of questions you send a new client immediately after they sign, to collect everything you need before work starts. Done well, it replaces three discovery calls and a month of email. Done badly, it is a 40-field form that gets half-completed and abandoned.

The difference is not length. It is whether each question changes what you will actually do. The questionnaire below is grouped into seven sections, and every question carries a short note explaining what you do with the answer. Delete any question where that note does not apply to your engagement.

The rule that makes intake forms work

Never ask a client something you can find out yourself. Their company address, their staff count, their current website platform, their competitors' ad copy: all of that is findable in five minutes. Every question you ask that you could have researched spends the client's patience on something that does not need it, and patience is finite. Spend it on the things only they know.

The second rule: ask for decisions, not data. "What is your budget?" gets you a number that may be fiction. "If this works, what would you want to spend next quarter, and who signs that off?" gets you a decision-maker and a real constraint.

How to send it

Send it once, in one place, with a deadline, alongside the file requests and access requests. Splitting intake across a form, an email thread, and a shared folder is the single most common reason onboarding stalls. If you can, send it as part of the same link that carried the proposal, so the client is not tracking four destinations.

1. The business behind the brief

Context that changes strategy. If an answer would not change your recommendation, cut the question.

In one sentence, what does your business do, and for whom?
What are you actually trying to achieve in the next 6 to 12 months?
How does this project support that goal?
What does success look like in a number you already track?
What happens if this project does not work?
Who inside your business needs to be convinced this was a good decision?
Is there a deadline driving this, and what is behind it?
What is your rough budget range for the next 12 months of this work?

2. The customer

Most briefs describe a demographic. You want the buying decision.

Who is your best customer, and what makes them your best rather than your biggest?
What problem are they trying to solve when they come to you?
What do they use or do today instead of using you?
What objection comes up most often before they buy?
What is the single thing that usually closes the deal?
How long is a typical buying cycle, and who else is involved in it?
Which customers should we not go after?
Is there existing customer research, survey data, or call recordings we can read?

3. Positioning and competitors

Ask what they believe. Verify it separately; the gap between the two is usually the insight.

Who do you lose deals to most often?
Why do you win when you win?
Why do you lose when you lose?
What do competitors say about themselves that is not true?
What can you say that no competitor can honestly say?
Are there claims you are legally or contractually not allowed to make?
Is there anything in your category customers routinely misunderstand?

4. What already exists

Prevents you rebuilding something that works, or repeating something that failed.

What have you already tried for this, and what happened?
What is working right now that we should not touch?
Which channels currently bring you customers, ranked?
Do you have brand guidelines, and are they enforced or aspirational?
Which assets are current, and which are out of date but still in circulation?
Are there past agencies or freelancers whose work we will inherit?
Was there anything about a previous partner that frustrated you?

5. Practical constraints

The answers that quietly determine whether the timeline you sold is real.

Who is our day-to-day contact, and what is their capacity for this?
Who has final sign-off, and are they available during the project?
How many people need to review work before it is approved?
What is your realistic turnaround on giving us feedback?
Are there planned absences, launches, or freezes in the project window?
Do you have internal legal, compliance, or brand review steps we should plan around?
Are there tools, platforms, or vendors we are required to work with?
Is there anything happening in the business we should know about but have not asked?

6. Access and assets

List these by name. Vague access requests come back as a password in a chat message.

Website or CMS admin access, at the permission level required
Analytics and Search Console access
Advertising accounts, with billing remaining on your side
Social profiles, granted through a business manager rather than shared logins
Email marketing or CRM platform access
Domain registrar and DNS, or the named person who can change DNS
Logo files in vector format, fonts, and colour values
Photography, video, and any licensed assets, with their licence terms

7. Working together

Ask these once at the start and you will avoid most relationship friction later.

How do you prefer to receive updates, and how often?
How do you prefer to receive bad news?
What would make you feel this project is going badly, even if the numbers are fine?
Have you worked with an agency before, and what would you change about it?
Is there anything we have not asked that we should have?

Trimming it down

48 questions is the full menu, not the recommended serving. For a small project, sections 1, 5, and 6 are close to mandatory and the rest is optional. For a retainer or a strategic engagement, sections 2 and 3 pay for themselves within a month.

A practical cut: if you cannot say what you would do differently based on the answer, delete the question. Every field you remove raises the completion rate on the ones you keep.

Where intake forms actually break

They break on delivery, not on content. The client opens the form on a phone, cannot upload the logo, saves nothing, closes the tab, and starts again from zero three days later. Then you email to chase, and now you are the problem.

Two fixes, in order of impact: let the client save and return without an account, and put the questions in the same place as the file uploads and the signature so there is only one thing to finish.

That is the shape of OnboardHive: one magic link per client that carries the proposal, the agreement, the deposit, the intake questions, and the uploads, with progress saved automatically and no login for the client. You can see which section they stopped at, which turns chasing into a single specific nudge rather than a generic reminder. The free plan covers a full client end to end.

Questions people ask

What questions should I ask a new client?

Cover seven areas: the business goal behind the project, who their customer is and how that customer buys, how they are positioned against competitors, what has already been tried, practical constraints like approvers and turnaround, access and assets, and how they want to be communicated with. Ask nothing you could research yourself.

How long should a client onboarding questionnaire be?

Short enough to finish in one sitting, which in practice means 10 to 20 questions for a project and up to 40 for a strategic retainer. Length matters less than relevance: completion rates fall fastest when clients hit questions that feel like admin rather than discovery.

What is the difference between a client questionnaire and a client intake form?

In most agencies they are the same document under two names. Where they differ, an intake form leans toward factual data capture such as contact and billing details, while a questionnaire leans toward discovery: goals, audience, and positioning. This template covers both.

Should I send the questionnaire before or after the contract is signed?

After. Detailed discovery is work, and doing it before a signature trains prospects to extract free strategy. The exception is a short pre-sales version, three or four questions, used to qualify and scope the proposal itself.

Run this template as one link instead of a document.

OnboardHive gives each client a single magic link carrying the proposal, agreement, deposit, intake, and uploads. No account for them, and you see exactly where they stopped.

Start free →