By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · June 2026

Accounting Client Intake: What to Capture Before You Touch Their Books

A new client walks in with a shoebox of receipts, a vague idea of their entity type, and the expectation that you will "just handle" their taxes. The next 45 minutes determine whether this engagement runs smoothly or becomes the file you dread opening every Monday morning. Accounting intake is not a formality. It is the single best opportunity to identify red flags, define the scope of work, and set expectations before a single journal entry gets posted.

Why a Generic Professional Services Form Fails Here

A general intake form asks for name, address, phone, and "describe what you need." That tells an accounting firm almost nothing. You need to know whether this client is a sole proprietor reporting on Schedule C or an S-Corp with payroll, whether they have made a Section 199A election, whether their prior-year return was filed on time or is sitting in a stack of IRS notices. A bookkeeping intake form gets closer, but bookkeeping and full-service accounting are different engagements with different information requirements.

Entity and Tax Structure

Before anything else, you need the complete picture of how this business is organized:

• Entity type — sole proprietorship, single-member LLC, multi-member LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, partnership, non-profit (501(c)(3) or other). Each has a different return type, different filing deadlines, and different compliance obligations.
• Tax elections in effect — has the LLC elected S-Corp treatment (Form 2553)? Is there a Section 754 election for a partnership? Has a fiscal year been elected? Clients often do not know, which is itself critical information.
• State registrations — which states are they registered in? Do they have nexus in states where they are not registered? Multi-state compliance is where engagements quietly expand.
• EIN and formation date — this seems obvious, but you would be surprised how many new clients cannot produce their EIN letter or remember when they formed.

Prior Filing History

This is where the real risk assessment happens:

• Prior-year returns — how many years have been filed? By whom? Are there any unfiled returns? If there are gaps, you are not just doing current-year work; you may be looking at an IRS Substitute for Return or a compliance project.
• Outstanding notices — CP2000, CP504, state tax assessments, penalty notices. If the client has notices they have been ignoring, that becomes your problem the moment you sign the engagement letter.
• Prior accountant or preparer — who did the work before? Why did the client leave? "My last accountant retired" is fine. "My last accountant got in trouble with the state board" is a different conversation.
• Audit history — any prior audits by IRS, state, or sales tax authorities? Open audits? This affects your risk assessment and your fee.

Engagement Scope: The Scope Creep Prevention Section

This is the most important section on the form, and the one most generic forms omit entirely. Solo practitioners especially need this documented from day one.

Accounting engagements fall into distinct categories, and each client needs to know exactly which ones they are paying for:

• Tax preparation only — annual return preparation, quarterly estimated payment calculations, and year-end planning. No ongoing bookkeeping, no payroll, no advisory.
• Monthly bookkeeping — bank reconciliation, transaction categorization, monthly financial statements. Does not include tax prep, payroll processing, or strategic advice.
• Full advisory — bookkeeping plus tax prep plus ongoing consultation. Entity restructuring recommendations, retirement plan analysis, tax projection modeling. This is a fundamentally different engagement at a fundamentally different price point.
• Payroll — is it in scope or out? If in scope, how many employees? Which states? W-2 or 1099 workers? Is there a current payroll provider (ADP, Gusto, Paychex) or is this being handled manually?

When a tax-only client calls in September asking you to "take a quick look" at their QuickBooks because something does not balance, that is a scope expansion. If your intake form documented the engagement as tax-only, you have the basis for a conversation about additional services and additional fees.

Financial Infrastructure

You also need the operational picture:

• Accounting software — QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop (which year?), Xero, Sage, FreshBooks, Excel, or nothing. Migration between platforms is a separate project with its own timeline and cost.
• Chart of accounts status — does one exist? Is it a default template or has it been customized? Has anyone reviewed it recently? A chart of accounts with 400 accounts and no hierarchy is a cleanup project before you can do anything useful.
• Bank and credit card accounts — how many? Which institutions? Is online access set up? Who else has access? Are personal and business expenses commingled?
• Inventory — do they carry inventory? What method (FIFO, LIFO, weighted average)? Is there a current inventory count? Inventory-based businesses add significant complexity.

The Bookkeeper vs. CPA Distinction

A bookkeeper intake form focuses on the operational mechanics: transaction volume, reconciliation frequency, software, and reporting needs. A CPA intake form adds the compliance layer: tax elections, filing history, outstanding notices, audit risk, and engagement type. If your firm does both, you need both forms. Running a full-service CPA engagement through a bookkeeper intake misses the tax and compliance questions. Running a bookkeeping-only client through a CPA intake wastes their time with questions about tax elections that do not apply to their engagement.

What Happens When You Skip This

Without a structured intake, the engagement starts with assumptions. You assume the books are reasonably clean. The client assumes payroll is included. Nobody documented the three years of unfiled state sales tax returns. Six months in, you are doing twice the work you quoted, the client is frustrated about fees, and you are looking at a potential professional liability issue because you missed the outstanding notice from the state.

A 15-minute intake conversation with the right form in front of you prevents all of that. Every field on the form exists because someone, at some point, learned the hard way what happens when you do not ask.

For the full set of CPA and accounting intake fields, see our Professional Services Bundle, which includes forms for accounting, bookkeeping, tax preparation, financial planning, and related practices.