New client intake form

The new client intake form worksheet costs your form in the client's minutes rather than yours: the total minutes it takes one client at your own field count and pace, the fields per section, how many of them are optional, what the form would cost if you asked only the required ones, and the client hours a month your firm consumes across everyone who fills it. Enter your own figures and it computes on the page, with no account.

The form's real cost, in the client's time

Fields multiplied by seconds per field, plus the minutes each requested document takes to find, is what your intake form actually asks of a new client. It is the first work they do for you and the only part of onboarding they experience directly.

The optional half, priced

Subtracting required fields from total fields gives the ones you are asking for anyway, and multiplying by your own pace prices them. Firms rarely cut fields on principle; they cut them when the minutes are on the page.

Sections, and the screens they become

Fields divided by sections tells you whether your grouping is doing any work. Five sections over thirty-four fields is about seven a screen, which is a form; one section over thirty-four is a wall.

The monthly total your firm consumes

Multiply one client's minutes by the clients who fill it each month and the form has a monthly cost measured in client hours. That is the number to put next to whatever a portal or an onboarding platform would cost you.

What the worksheet refuses to decide

Which fields you need, what a regulator requires you to collect and whether a field is genuinely optional are your firm's decisions. The worksheet prices the form you describe and nothing else.