Accounting & Tax Preparation Intake Forms & Client Questionnaires

Every CPA has had the experience: a new client shows up for tax preparation in March, you start gathering documents, and halfway through the engagement you discover they have two unfiled years, a K-1 from a partnership they forgot to mention, cryptocurrency transactions on three different exchanges, and an IRS notice sitting in a kitchen drawer. The engagement you quoted at $800 just became a $3,000 project with a deadline you cannot meet. A structured intake form catches all of that at the first meeting, before you write the engagement letter and before you commit to a timeline.

Templateez offers three accounting-related intake forms that cover different practice areas. The Accounting & Tax Preparation form handles general accounting and tax engagements. The Bookkeeper & Accountant form is designed for ongoing bookkeeping relationships and monthly accounting services. The Tax, CPA & Accounting form focuses on CPA-specific intake with an emphasis on compliance and advisory services. Each form follows the same structure, so your staff learns one workflow regardless of the engagement type.

What the Accounting Forms Capture

The service type section covers the full range of what accounting firms actually do: individual tax preparation, business tax preparation, monthly or quarterly bookkeeping, payroll processing, audit representation, tax planning, entity formation advice, and back taxes or amended returns. The entity type section documents whether the client is a sole proprietor, single-member LLC, multi-member LLC, S-corp, C-corp, partnership, or non-profit — because that determination drives everything from which return gets filed to how the owner takes compensation.

The form captures fiscal year end, accounting method (cash vs. accrual), prior preparer name and firm, and the reason for switching preparers. That last field is more useful than it sounds — a client who left their last CPA over a billing dispute is a different risk profile than one who moved to a new city. The compliance section asks about IRS notices, audit history, state filing requirements for multi-state businesses, estimated tax payment history, and whether the client has foreign financial accounts (which triggers FBAR and FATCA reporting) or cryptocurrency holdings. Crypto is the field that saves the most time: if you discover in April that a client made 200 trades on Coinbase and never reported any of them, you are not filing that return on time.

The intake form feeds the engagement letter, not the other way around. Your engagement letter scopes the work and sets the fee. Without a thorough intake, you are guessing at scope. With the intake form completed, you know exactly how many entities you are filing for, how many states are involved, whether there are international reporting obligations, and whether the client has any outstanding compliance issues that will require separate resolution before the current-year return can be filed.

The companion client questionnaire is what you send to the client before the initial consultation. It asks them to list all income sources, identify their filing status, disclose any life changes (marriage, divorce, new dependents, home purchase, retirement distributions), and provide their prior year return if available. The questionnaire is written in plain language — it asks "Did you buy or sell cryptocurrency, NFTs, or digital assets in any amount?" rather than "Do you have reportable virtual currency transactions under Notice 2014-21?" The questionnaire includes a signature and authorization section so the client can grant you permission to contact their prior preparer and request transcripts from the IRS.

Related Financial & Professional Forms

Accounting firms frequently refer clients to or receive referrals from financial planners, mortgage brokers, and insurance agents. Our Financial Planning form handles wealth management and advisory intake. The Mortgage Broker form captures the lending side that your clients will need when they are ready to buy property. The Insurance Agent & Claims form covers risk management intake, and the Bookkeeper & Accountant and Tax, CPA & Accounting forms handle the specialized tracks within your own practice.

Pricing

Each form is $19.99 for the complete set (intake + questionnaire), $14.99 for intake only, or $9.99 for questionnaire only. All PDFs are fillable in Adobe Reader and password-protected against editing.

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Related Guides

Accounting Client Intake Form Guide · Bookkeeper Client Intake Form Guide · Intake Forms for Accounting & Tax Preparation · Client Intake for Financial Advisors & Compliance