Intake Forms for Pest Control Companies: Infestation Assessment, Treatment History, and Property Documentation

By Daniel Akselrod · July 2026

A pest control technician arrives at a residential property for a general pest treatment. The work order says “ants in kitchen.” The technician begins a perimeter spray with a pyrethroid-based product. Twenty minutes later, the homeowner comes outside in a panic — their indoor cat is having tremors. Cats lack the liver enzyme (glucuronyl transferase) that metabolizes pyrethroids, making them extraordinarily sensitive to these chemicals. The homeowner mentioned the cat when they called. The dispatcher wrote “ants in kitchen.” A proper intake form would have captured the pet information, the pet type, and triggered a product selection that excluded pyrethroids from the treatment plan entirely.

Pest control intake is not a scheduling step. It is the foundation of a safe, effective, and legally defensible treatment plan. A thorough pest control intake form captures what the customer is dealing with, what the property looks like, what has been tried before, who lives in the home, and what limitations apply to the treatment approach.

Pest identification: what they think they have versus what they actually have

Customers self-diagnose pest problems the way patients self-diagnose medical conditions — confidently and often incorrectly. Your intake form should capture the customer’s description of the pest, but treat it as a starting point for professional assessment, not a confirmed identification.

The most common misidentifications create real treatment problems. Customers frequently confuse carpenter ants with termites — both cause wood damage, but the treatment protocols are completely different. Carpenter ants do not eat wood; they excavate galleries for nesting, and treatment targets the colony with baits or direct nest injection. Termites consume cellulose and require either soil-applied termiticide barriers, bait stations, or fumigation. Treating for the wrong pest wastes the customer’s money and leaves the actual problem untouched.

Your intake should capture: what the customer has seen (live insects, droppings, damage, sounds in walls), where they have seen it, when activity is most noticeable (time of day, season), any physical specimens available for identification, and whether they have photos. It should also ask about indicators the customer might not connect to pest activity — unexplained bites (bed bugs, fleas, mites), small piles of frass or sawdust (carpenter ants, wood-boring beetles), musty odors (large rodent populations, cockroach infestations), or grease marks along baseboards (rodent runways).

Property documentation: the treatment environment

The property itself determines treatment options, product selection, application methods, and re-entry times. Two houses on the same street can require completely different approaches based on their construction and layout:

• Property type and construction — single-family home, townhouse, apartment, condo, mobile home, commercial building. Construction material matters: slab-on-grade versus crawl space versus full basement changes how you approach subterranean termite treatment. Wood-frame construction with vinyl siding has different entry points than brick veneer over block.
• Age of the structure — older homes (pre-1980) may have construction gaps, deteriorated weatherstripping, and pest entry points that newer construction does not. They may also have lead paint, which creates restrictions on preparation methods (you cannot sand or disturb surfaces that may contain lead paint during pest control preparation).
• Square footage and number of stories — affects product volume calculations, treatment time, and pricing. A 1,200-square-foot ranch is a different job than a 4,000-square-foot colonial with three levels.
• Crawl space, basement, and attic access — can the technician physically access the crawl space (minimum 18-inch clearance for safe entry)? Is the attic accessible via a pull-down ladder or a scuttle hole? Is the basement finished (restricts treatment options) or unfinished (full access to sill plate, rim joist, and foundation walls)? Lack of access to these areas limits inspection scope and treatment options, and the customer needs to understand that limitation upfront.
• Exterior environment — landscaping that contacts the structure (mulch beds against the foundation, tree branches touching the roof, ivy growing on walls), standing water sources (birdbaths, clogged gutters, low spots in the yard), wood piles or debris near the structure, exterior lighting that attracts insects. These conditions create pest pressure that no interior treatment alone will resolve.

Current infestation details and treatment history

Your intake needs to establish a timeline and severity baseline for the current problem:

Location within the property — which rooms, which floors, interior versus exterior, specific areas (under kitchen sink, behind refrigerator, master bathroom, garage). Pest activity is rarely uniform throughout a structure, and the activity map tells the technician where to focus the inspection and where to concentrate treatment.

Severity estimate — is the customer seeing one or two insects occasionally, or dozens daily? Are they finding droppings in multiple rooms? Are there visible signs of structural damage? Severity affects treatment intensity, product selection, the number of follow-up visits required, and honestly whether the job is profitable at the quoted price.

Duration — how long has the customer been aware of the problem? A customer who noticed ants last Tuesday is in a different situation than a customer who has been fighting a cockroach infestation for six months. Long-duration infestations suggest established populations, potential structural nesting, and likely resistance to over-the-counter products the customer has already tried.

DIY treatments attempted — this is critical information. Customers frequently apply retail pesticides before calling a professional, and those products can interfere with professional treatment. Over-the-counter ant sprays kill foragers on contact but scatter the colony, making bait placement less effective because surviving ants avoid the treated area. Foggers (“bug bombs”) push pests deeper into wall voids and contaminate surfaces without reaching the source. Your technician needs to know what has been applied, when, and where so they can plan around it.

Prior professional treatment — if the property was previously treated by another company, your intake should capture: which company, what pests were treated, what products were used (if known), when the last treatment occurred, whether the treatment was effective, and whether there is an existing warranty or service agreement in place. If the customer is switching providers because the previous treatment failed, that tells your technician something important about what does not work on this property.

Chemical sensitivity, occupant health, and pet safety

This section is not optional. It is where you prevent the scenarios that generate liability claims, negative reviews, and harm to the people and animals in the home:

• Occupants with chemical sensitivities — asthma, COPD, chemical sensitivity disorders (multiple chemical sensitivity, or MCS), compromised immune systems, pregnancy. These conditions may require low-toxicity formulations, extended ventilation periods, or alternative treatment methods like heat treatment for bed bugs instead of chemical application.
• Children in the home — ages matter. Infants and toddlers who crawl on floors and put objects in their mouths have higher exposure risk than older children. Treatment product selection, application locations, and re-entry times must account for young children.
• Pets and species — as noted in the opening example, cats are acutely sensitive to pyrethroids. Birds are sensitive to aerosolized chemicals. Fish tanks and aquariums must be covered and aeration systems turned off during treatment. Dogs are generally more tolerant but still need to be removed during application and for the specified re-entry period. Reptiles, rabbits, hamsters — each has different sensitivities. Your intake needs to capture not just “do you have pets” but the species, number, and where they are housed.
• Treatment preferences — some customers specifically want green, organic, or reduced-risk products. Others want maximum effectiveness and do not care about product type. Some customers have strong preferences based on prior experience. Documenting this preference at intake prevents the conversation where the technician has already mixed a product and the customer says “I only want organic treatments.”

Access, preparation, and scheduling requirements

Pest control treatment requires property preparation, and that preparation is the customer’s responsibility. Your intake is where you set those expectations:

Access requirements — will someone be home during treatment? If not, how will the technician access the interior? Is there a lockbox, a garage code, or a key under a mat? For multi-unit buildings, is there a building manager who provides access? Some treatments (fumigation, heat treatment for bed bugs) require the property to be vacant for 24 to 72 hours. The customer needs to plan for that.

Preparation checklist — for cockroach or bed bug treatment, preparation is extensive: clearing kitchen cabinets, pulling appliances from walls, laundering all bedding in hot water, removing items from closet floors. For general pest treatment, preparation is minimal: clear items from along baseboards, pick up pet food and water dishes. Your intake should include the preparation checklist specific to the pest being treated so the customer knows what to do before the technician arrives. A technician who shows up for a bed bug treatment and finds an unprepared home faces a choice between treating a property that is not ready (suboptimal results) or leaving and rescheduling (lost time and revenue).

Re-entry time — how long after treatment must occupants and pets stay out of the treated area? This varies by product, application method, and the presence of sensitive occupants. Your intake should document who is in the home so the technician can specify the appropriate re-entry interval and communicate it clearly.

Warranty, follow-up, and ongoing service terms

Pest control is rarely a one-visit solution, and your intake should set expectations for the full service relationship:

• Initial treatment warranty — most pest control companies offer a 30- to 90-day warranty on the initial treatment. If the pest problem recurs within the warranty period, the company returns for a re-treatment at no charge. Your intake should document what the warranty covers, what it excludes (new pest species, infestations caused by sanitation issues the customer was told to address), and the process for requesting a warranty service.
• Follow-up schedule — some treatments require scheduled follow-ups. Bed bug treatment typically requires two to three visits spaced 10 to 14 days apart to catch newly hatched nymphs. Termite bait stations require quarterly monitoring. Your intake should document the recommended follow-up schedule so the customer understands this is not a drop-in-and-done service.
• Ongoing maintenance contracts — quarterly general pest control is the bread and butter of the industry. Your intake should present the ongoing maintenance options, pricing (per-visit versus annual contract), and what each visit includes.

A pest control company that arrives on the first call already knowing the property layout, the pest identification clues, the treatment history, the chemical restrictions, and the pet safety requirements is a company that treats the problem correctly the first time. The Trade Services Bundle includes pest control alongside 51 other service trades, each with profession-specific intake and questionnaire fields built for how that industry actually operates.