Your first session with a new client should feel like coaching, not an interview where you’re scrambling to collect basic information while also trying to build rapport.
That’s the problem with skipping an intake form. By the time you’ve covered the basics (goals, history, what prompted them to reach out), you’ve used half your session on admin, and the real work hasn’t even started.
A well-designed life coach intake form fixes this. It moves the information-gathering out of the session and into a structured questionnaire clients fill out beforehand, so you show up to every call already prepared.
In this guide, you’ll get 20+ intake form questions organized by category, tips for adapting them to different coaching niches, and a straight answer on which tool to use to send your form (including how to automate the whole thing in Paperbell).
Why Life Coach Intake Forms Matter
Life coaching is personal. Every client brings a different mix of goals, blind spots, past experiences, and communication styles. This means that even a structured program needs to adapt to fit the person in front of you.
When you try to gather all of that during a first session, a few things can go wrong. Sessions run long. You miss important details because you’re too focused on the next question to really listen. You lose the chance to build on what they’ve shared because you’re still in collection mode.
Sending a questionnaire beforehand changes the dynamic completely. Your client has time to reflect and give thoughtful answers. You have time to read those answers before you talk. The session starts at a higher level because you’ve already done the groundwork.
There’s also a practical systems benefit. Adding an intake form to your onboarding process means nothing slips through. No missed questions. No notes scrawled in the margin of a legal pad. Every new client goes through the same thoughtful process, and their answers live in one place you can reference throughout your work together.
If you’re using Paperbell, intake forms are built right in. You can create a custom form for each package, set it to send automatically when a client buys the package, and their responses get stored alongside their scheduling, payment, and session history.
20+ Questions to Include in Your Life Coaching Intake Form
The right questions depend on your niche and your coaching style, but here’s a solid starting set organized by category.
Personal Information
- Full name
- Preferred contact details (email, phone, messaging app, or whatever fits your communication style)
- Billing information (if you handle invoicing separately)
- How did you hear about this coaching program?
- What’s your preferred name or what should I call you in sessions?
Background and Context
- What prompted you to seek coaching right now?
- What’s the main challenge you’d like support with?
- Have you worked with a coach before? If so, what was helpful, and what wasn’t?
- Is there anything from your past (experiences, patterns, significant events) that you feel is relevant for me to know?
Goals and Aspirations
- What specific goals do you want to achieve through coaching?
- How will your life look or feel different once you’ve achieved them?
- What has gotten in the way of making these changes on your own so far?
- On a scale of 1–10, how committed are you to making real changes right now? What’s behind that number?
The Coaching Relationship
- What kind of accountability or support helps you show up at your best?
- Do you prefer a coach who asks a lot of questions, or one who shares more direct input and guidance?
- Are there any circumstances such as schedule, time zone, finances, health, that might affect your ability to fully participate?
- What would make this coaching experience a success for you?
- Is there anything you’d like me to know before we begin working together?
Progress and Reflection
- What does progress look like to you and how will you know things are moving?
- What tends to get in the way when you start working toward a goal?
- What strengths do you bring to this work that we should build on?
You don’t need to use all of these. Pick 8–12 that fit your process and your clients’ needs. The goal is enough information to show up prepared, not an interrogation.
Intake Form Questions by Coaching Niche
Different specialties need different information. Here are niche-specific additions to layer on top of the core questions above.
Health and Wellness Coach Intake Form Questions
- What does your current diet look like on a typical day?
- How often do you exercise, and what types of movement do you enjoy?
- Are there any health conditions, injuries, or physical limitations I should know about?
- What’s your relationship with sleep.Duration, quality, patterns?
- Have you worked with any other health professionals (doctors, nutritionists, therapists) that I should be aware of?
- What has and hasn’t worked for you in past attempts to improve your health?
Business Coach Intake Form Questions
- What does your business do, and how long have you been running it?
- What stage are you at? Are you just starting, growing, stuck at a plateau, or scaling?
- What’s your current revenue, and what’s your target for the next 12 months?
- What’s the biggest bottleneck in your business right now?
- What does your team look like, and where do you feel most limited as a leader?
Career Coach Intake Form Questions
- What’s your current role, and how long have you been in it?
- Are you looking to advance in your field, change careers, or figure out what you want?
- What parts of your work do you find most energizing? Which do you find most draining?
- Have you applied for other roles recently? What’s been the sticking point?
- What does your ideal working life look like in three years?
Executive Coach Intake Form Questions
- What’s your current leadership role and scope of responsibility?
- What specific leadership challenges are you looking to work on?
- How would your direct reports describe your current leadership style?
- What feedback have you received in the past year that you’re still sitting with?
- Are there organizational dynamics such as team conflict, board relationships or transition, that are part of the context?
Relationship Coach Intake Form Questions
- Are you focusing on a specific relationship (romantic partner, family, coworkers) or patterns across multiple relationships?
- What recurring patterns have you noticed in your relationships?
- Have you had therapy or coaching related to relationships before? What was helpful?
- What does a healthy, fulfilling relationship look like to you?
When and How to Send Your Coaching Intake Form
Timing matters. Here’s a process that works well:
- Short pre-discovery form. For prospects booking a free consultation call, send a brief 3–4 question form covering the basics: what they’re looking to work on, what’s prompted them to reach out now, and any relevant context. This helps you show up to the discovery call prepared without asking for too much before they’ve decided to work with you. If you use Paperbell, a survey only goes to someone who has bought a package, so attach the short form to a free discovery session package.
- Full intake form after signing up. Once a client commits, signs your coaching contract, and buys or books their first package, send the complete intake form. This is where you gather everything you need to build a solid coaching plan and prepare for the kickoff call.
- Mid-program check-in. For longer engagements (3+ months), consider a brief mid-point survey asking how the work is going, whether their goals have shifted, and what they need more or less of. In Paperbell, open the package’s Surveys tab when the time comes and use Send to client to deliver it.
Keep the full intake form to 8–15 questions. Long forms discourage completion, especially before a client has had a chance to experience working with you and build trust.
Intake isn’t the only form you’ll send, either. For the rest, see our roundup of coaching form templates.
What should I use to send intake forms to coaching clients?
An intake form works best when it arrives with the booking, so for most life coaches the right tool is the one that already handles their packages. Paperbell builds the survey into the package: clients get it as part of buying or booking, and their answers sit on the client record. Google Forms does the job while you have a handful of clients, and Jotform or Practice Better fit better if you need file uploads, signed consent or healthcare-grade privacy.
Emailing a PDF questionnaire still works too, as long as you’re happy to chase it and file the answers yourself. Here are four tools that do that admin for you, and what each one can’t do.
Paperbell
Paperbell is a coaching platform, and intake surveys are built into each package. You write the questions once (long text, short text, dropdown, select one, select many, or a 1-10 scale), then choose when the survey goes out: right after purchase, before or after an appointment (anywhere from three days before to four weeks after it), around a group session, or after the final appointment. A purchase survey opens in the client’s browser the moment after the checkout is complete. The others arrive by email, and clients can also find them in the Surveys tab of their client portal if they lose the email.
Setup takes three steps: open Packages and pick the package, open its Surveys tab and add your questions, then set the trigger and timing. Every answer lands on the client’s profile and under the package’s Surveys tab, so you can read it before a session without digging through your inbox. Each package can carry its own survey, and you can copy one across to other packages.
Best for: Coaches who sell packages and want every new client to get the intake form without sending it themselves.
The catch: A survey can only go to someone who has bought a package, so for prospects you’ll need a free discovery session package (or a free survey-only package) to attach the short form to. You build the survey inside Paperbell rather than uploading a form you already have, and once a question is saved its wording can’t be edited (deleting a question removes it, and its answers, for every client). Paperbell also isn’t compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and its own help docs point to Practice Better as the HIPAA-compliant alternative.
Google Forms
If you already have a Google account, Google Forms is quick to start. Build your questionnaire from scratch or from a template, then share it by email or on social media, or embed it on your website. Responses come in live, with automatic charts, and you can export everything to Google Sheets or let someone else see the results too.
Best for: Getting an intake form live today when you’re new and only have a few clients.
The catch: It’s a form tool rather than a client system, so sending each form at the right moment is on you.
Jotform
Jotform is a form builder with more under the hood: conditional logic (a question only shows when an earlier answer makes it relevant), file uploads, e-signatures and payment fields. You can send submissions on to Google Sheets or Google Drive, and take payments through Stripe. For coaches who collect health information, Jotform offers HIPAA-enabled forms and signs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with accounts that turn those features on.
Best for: Any form where the client has to upload documents, sign a consent form or share health details without leaving it.
The catch: A Jotform form is a standalone form: it isn’t part of a package and booking flow, so you still set up how it reaches each client. The HIPAA features also aren’t on by default, so you have to enable them in your account first.
Practice Better
Then there’s Practice Better, practice management software for health coaches and other wellness practitioners. Intake comes as form templates you reuse across your practice, and clients fill them in through a client portal. Both the portal and its messaging are HIPAA compliant.
Best for: Health and wellness coaches whose intake forms ask about medical history, medication or anything else that counts as protected health information.
The catch: If you’re a life, career or business coach, you’re likely to use only a small corner of it, since it’s built for health practitioners.
Whichever tool you pick, write the questions first and keep the list short. The tool only decides how the form reaches the client and where the answers live afterward.
Want the form to send itself? Add a survey to your package in Paperbell and every client who buys it gets the form without you lifting a finger. Try Paperbell for free.
Sample Life Coaching Intake Form Template
Here’s a ready-to-use template you can adapt for your practice. Copy and customize it based on your niche and coaching style.
Welcome to [Your Coaching Program Name]!
Before our first session, I’d love to learn more about you and what you’re hoping to work on. Your answers help me show up fully prepared so we can hit the ground running. This should take about 10–15 minutes.
- What’s your preferred name?
- What’s your best contact email and phone number?
- What made you reach out for coaching at this point in your life?
- What’s the main challenge or area you’d like to focus on?
- What would a successful outcome from our work together look like to you?
- What has gotten in the way of making this change on your own so far?
- Have you worked with a coach before? What was helpful, and what wasn’t?
- What kind of accountability tends to work best for you?
- Is there anything (schedule, health, finances, other commitments) I should know about that might affect our work?
- Is there anything else you’d like me to know before we begin?
Frequently Asked Questions About Coaching Intake Forms
What is a coaching intake form?
A coaching intake form is a questionnaire sent to new clients before their first session. It collects information about their goals, challenges, background, and expectations so the coach can show up prepared and tailor the coaching relationship from day one.
How do I do a coaching intake session?
In your first session, use the intake form answers as your starting point. Clarify their goals, surface anything that needs more context, set expectations for the engagement, and start building rapport. You don’t need to review the form out loud. Just let it inform the questions you ask and the direction you take the conversation.
How do I create a coaching intake form?
Write the questions first. Pick 8 to 12 from the list above, add any niche-specific ones, and put them in the order you’d ask them in conversation. Then choose a tool that fits your practice: a standalone form builder is enough while you have a few clients, and a coaching platform like Paperbell attaches the survey to a package so it reaches each client as part of booking. The tools section above compares four options.
What is an intake form for a health coach?
A health coach intake form covers the client’s current diet, exercise habits, sleep, energy levels, health history, and specific wellness goals. It should also ask about any medical conditions or professionals they’re currently working with. This becomes relevant context for how you structure the coaching sessions and what falls outside your scope.
Because those answers are health information, check where a tool stands on privacy and HIPAA before you use it for this. Paperbell isn’t HIPAA compliant, so a health coach collecting medical details needs something built for that, like Jotform’s HIPAA-enabled forms or Practice Better.
How long should a coaching intake form be?
For confirmed clients, 8–15 questions is the sweet spot. Enough to get meaningful context without overwhelming someone who just signed up. For pre-discovery forms, keep it to 3–5 questions. The goal is just enough to have a good conversation, not a full intake.
Should I use different intake forms for different packages?
Yes, where it makes sense. A 6-month business coaching intensive needs different intake questions as opposed to a one-time career clarity session. In Paperbell, you can create a separate survey for each package so the questions are always relevant to what the client actually signed up for.
What is the best tool for coaching intake forms?
It depends on what you need the form to do. Google Forms covers a coach with a few clients who just wants the answers in one place. Jotform adds file uploads and signed consent, and Practice Better is the pick for health coaches who need HIPAA compliance. For a life, business or career coach selling packages, Paperbell is the better fit, because the intake survey is part of the package: the client gets it when they buy, and the answers are waiting on their profile before your first session.
Build Better Onboarding From Day One
A good intake form is the difference between a first session that hits the ground running and one that spends 30 minutes catching up. Your clients feel better prepared. You show up more focused. The whole coaching relationship starts from a stronger place.
With Paperbell, once the survey is attached to a package it runs automatically for every client who buys it. Try Paperbell for free and see how much smoother onboarding can be.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2021 and has since been updated for accuracy and completeness.
