Pet Business Intake Form: What to Ask, What to Skip
A pet business intake form should collect only what you will actually act on: owner and emergency contacts, the pet's identity, vaccination records with expiry dates, veterinarian details and treatment authorization, medications and allergies, behaviour and handling notes, care routine, and signed policy consents. That is roughly 15–25 fields for grooming and 25–35 for daycare or boarding — enough to keep a pet safe and a handler informed, short enough that a new client finishes it on a phone in under five minutes. Everything else — marketing surveys, fields nobody reads, details that change weekly and are better confirmed at drop-off — belongs off the form, because every extra question costs you completed signups from people who were ready to book.
What should a pet business intake form always ask?
Break the form into short sections so it reads as six small steps rather than one wall of questions. These fields earn their place in almost every pet business.
| Section | Ask for | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Owner and contact | Name, mobile, email, preferred contact method | You need to reach someone within a minute, not a day. |
| Emergency contact | Name and phone for someone who is not the owner | The owner is often unreachable in exactly the moment you need them. |
| Pet identity | Name, breed, age, sex, spay/neuter status, weight, microchip number | Drives pricing, group placement, and identification. |
| Veterinarian | Practice name and phone, plus written treatment authorization and a spending cap | Without the cap and the signature, an emergency becomes a phone-tag problem. |
| Vaccinations | Rabies, DHPP and bordetella (FVRCP for cats) with expiry dates, plus a document upload | Dates can trigger reminders; a scanned page cannot. |
| Medical | Allergies, chronic conditions, current medications with dose and timing, recent surgery, mobility limits | Directly changes handling, drying, and play eligibility. |
| Behaviour | Bite history, reactivity triggers, resource guarding, sensitive handling areas, separation anxiety | The single most under-asked and most consequential section. |
| Care routine | Feeding amounts and times, food from home, crate preference, potty schedule | Boarding and daycare only; skip it for a grooming-only client. |
| Service specifics | Preferred style or length, past bad experiences, matting tolerance | Prevents the most common source of a first-visit complaint. |
| Consents | Emergency treatment, photo and social use, cancellation and no-show policy, matting release | Timestamped agreement is worth far more than a verbal yes. |
What should you leave off the intake form?
Most forms are long because nobody has ever deleted a question. Cut these first:
- Full mailing address, unless you invoice, ship retail orders, or run a mobile service where the address is the appointment.
- Marketing surveys. One optional "how did you hear about us" dropdown, maximum — never a required page of them.
- Anything you already captured at booking. Re-asking name, phone and pet name signals that the two systems don't talk to each other.
- Fields nobody reads. If no staff member has looked at collar colour in a year, delete it.
- Essay boxes. Replace open-ended paragraphs with checkboxes plus one free-text "anything else we should know".
- Credit card numbers typed into a form field. Card details belong in a secure payment flow at booking or checkout, never as plain text on an intake document.
- Details that change weekly — today's meal time, current weight, this week's medication change. Confirm those at drop-off.
- A full repeat for the second pet. Reuse the owner block and ask only pet-specific fields again.
The test for every field is simple: name the decision it changes. If nothing in your day is done differently because of the answer, that question is costing you signups for nothing in return.
What does a digital form do that paper and PDFs cannot?
Dates become reminders
A rabies expiry stored as a real date can prompt the client three weeks out and quietly block an online booking once it lapses. The same date written on a clipboard scan is invisible until someone checks the folder at drop-off — usually too late to fix.
The answers reach the person holding the dog
Intake is only useful if the behaviour note appears on the check-in screen and the grooming ticket, not in a filing cabinet. When the form writes straight to the pet record, the handler sees "nervous about nail dremel, muzzle-trained" at the moment it matters.
Shorter, smarter, mobile-first
Conditional logic hides the boarding questions from a grooming client. Autofill handles the contact block. Returning clients confirm a pre-filled form annually instead of retyping it. Realistically, a good digital intake takes three to five minutes on a phone; a printed one takes ten and gets finished in your lobby while you wait.
How do you keep intake information current?
Intake is not a one-time event, and stale records are the reason a form gives false confidence.
- Re-confirm annually. Send the pre-filled form on the anniversary and ask the client to change only what's different.
- Let vaccination expiry drive it. Automatic reminders before the lapse date beat a manual audit every time.
- Ask one question at booking: "Has anything changed with Bella since your last visit?"
- Timestamp behaviour notes and let staff append after visits. A note from three years ago should not read as current.
- Audit the form itself twice a year and delete any field that no longer changes a decision.
Franpos handles this as one system rather than a form bolted onto a calendar: online booking with client and pet records, vaccination tracking, digital agreements and consents, appointment reminders, cloud point of sale and payments, memberships and packages, and marketing — so what a client enters once is what your team sees at check-in. Explore our grooming solutions, compare plans on pricing, or book a demo and we'll rebuild your current intake form with you.
Frequently asked questions
Should intake be required before the first appointment?
Yes for daycare, boarding and any service involving other animals — vaccination status and behaviour history are safety prerequisites, not paperwork. For grooming, requiring it at online booking is still the better default: the alternative is a client filling out forms in your lobby while the schedule slips.
How long should the form take?
Under five minutes on a phone. If yours takes longer, the fix is deleting questions rather than redesigning the layout.
Do we need a separate form for each pet?
Separate pet records, yes — every animal needs its own vaccinations, medications and behaviour notes. But the client should enter owner details once and then add pets, not restart the whole form.
Can we ask for card details on the intake form?
Not as typed-in numbers. Store a card on file through your payment system's secure flow instead, and use the intake form only for the policy consent that authorizes charging it.
What about cats and small animals?
Same structure, different specifics: FVRCP and rabies expiry for cats, carrier and handling preferences, indoor/outdoor status, and stress triggers. Use conditional logic so a cat owner never sees the dog playgroup questions.
