Collect Client Intake Info Without a Separate Step
Calendly and Acuity treat intake forms as a paid add-on or a separate Zapier chain. Keepp's booking questions live in the same flow — asked before the slot is confirmed, saved with the appointment.
By Keepp Team
Booking a time is rarely the only thing you need from a client before they show up. A coach needs to know what someone’s working on. A salon needs to know about allergies before a color appointment. A photographer needs a shoot location. A consultant needs context on the problem before the call starts, so the first ten minutes aren’t spent asking questions that could’ve been answered in advance.
Calendly’s intake-form-equivalent (their “Routing Forms” and custom question fields) sits on paid plans, and building a real conditional intake flow generally means wiring up a separate tool through Zapier. Acuity supports intake forms, but as a feature bolted onto a scheduling tool built around calendar management first — configuring it is its own separate setup outside the booking flow itself. Either way, the pattern is the same: scheduling is the product, and getting information from the client is an add-on you configure around it.
The question is part of the booking flow itself
Every booking offering on Keepp can carry its own custom questions — short text, long text, email, phone, single-select, multi-select, or a social handle field — asked in the same flow where someone picks a time and pays if payment is required. A question marked required has to be answered before the booking is confirmed, so an appointment can’t exist without the information you need to actually run it.
Answers are saved with that specific booking. Open an upcoming appointment in your dashboard and the client’s answers — allergy notes, session goals, shoot location — are right there next to the time, the client’s contact info, and the payment status. Nothing to look up in a separate form tool before the appointment starts.
Real examples
- Coaches and consultants: a long-text field for “what are you hoping to work through in this session,” so the call starts with context instead of a warm-up question.
- Salons and spas: a multi-select for allergies or sensitivities, required before a color or chemical service can be booked at all.
- Photographers: a short-text field for shoot location, a single-select for indoor/outdoor, so gear and timing decisions happen before the day of the shoot, not on it.
- Personal trainers: a single-select for experience level or injury history, so a first session is planned around the actual client instead of a generic intake conversation.
Why this matters more the further in advance someone books
A same-day appointment has less room for the intake step to fall through — you’ll likely talk to the client before it matters. A session booked weeks or months out is a different story: by the time it happens, a form response sitting disconnected from the calendar event is exactly the kind of thing that gets lost, especially if it lived in a separate tool from the one showing you the schedule. Attaching the answer to the booking itself means it’s still there, still connected to the right appointment, whether the session is tomorrow or three months from now.
It also means canceling the separate step of “send an intake form after they book, hope they fill it out before the appointment.” A required question can’t be skipped, so there’s no appointment on your calendar with intake information you’re still waiting on.
For the underlying mechanics of order and booking questions — the seven field types, the required-answer rule — see ask what you need to know, right at checkout. For how the rest of the booking flow works — real calendar sync, deposits, rescheduling — see how online bookings actually work.
Common questions
Can different booking offerings on the same page ask different questions? Yes — each booking offering has its own independent question set, so a haircut and a color service can ask entirely different things before confirming.
Does a required question block the booking from being paid for? Yes — if payment is required on that offering, the booking flow completes both the required answers and payment together before the slot is held.
Can I see a client’s past answers if they rebook? Each booking keeps its own answer snapshot from when it was made, so a returning client’s new booking asks fresh — useful when something like an allergy or a goal has changed since their last visit.
Where to start
Add a question to any existing booking offering from its editor, mark it required if you can’t run the session without it. Take bookings if you haven’t set one up yet — free to start, deposits included on the free plan.
Add intake questions to your first booking offering at keepp.link — free to start.