OnBoard'26 : The best intake & consent forms for therapists

The first ten minutes of a first session are the most valuable ten minutes you will spend with a new client. Spending them on a clipboard is a waste of both your time and theirs.

Moving intake online is a single afternoon of work. Here is the order that keeps it painless.

Start from what you already ask#

Do not redesign your intake while you digitise it — you will stall. Take your existing form and split it into three buckets:

1. Identity and contact — name, age, phone, emergency contact
2. Clinical context — presenting concern, history, current medication
3. Consent — fees, cancellation policy, confidentiality and its limits

Bucket three is the one that must be timestamped and stored. The other two can evolve as your practice does.

Send it before the session, not at it#

Attach the intake link to the booking confirmation. Clients fill it in at home, in their own time, and arrive having already had a first honest think about why they booked. You read it beforehand and open with a real question rather than a form.

• Intake link goes out with the booking confirmation
• Reminder repeats the link if the form is still open at 24 hours
• Handing a clipboard to someone in your waiting room

Keep consent auditable#

Consent is the piece that has to hold up later. Store the version of the form the client actually signed, not just the fact that they signed something:

{
  "clientId": "cl_8213",
  "consentVersion": "2026-04-01",
  "signedAt": "2026-05-12T09:41:00+05:30",
  "ipAddress": "103.21.x.x",
  "scope": ["fees", "cancellation", "confidentiality"]
}

When you update your policy, publish a new version rather than editing the old one. Clients on the old version get re-prompted at their next booking; everyone else is untouched.

A note on what not to collect#

Collect less than you think you need. Every extra field is a field you must store, secure and eventually justify. If a question would not change what you do in the first session, it does not belong on the intake form.

The result#

New clients arrive prepared, your notes start with real context, and the first ten minutes go back to being clinical time. That is the whole return — and it compounds with every new client you take on.