For business, executive, career and life coaches
The intake answered and the deposit paid, before the first session
Create a client, send one link by text, email or WhatsApp, and they answer your intake questions and pay the deposit for their package by card. The money goes straight to your own Stripe account.
Free until your first client pays you, then $19/month · card required
An example engagement
- Package
- 12-week leadership program
- IntakePay’s cut
- $00% of every deposit
- Deposit into your own Stripe accountPaid by card
- $1,500less Stripe’s fee
The duct-tape version
The way many coaches collect an intake and a deposit today
- A Google Form for the intake and a separate Stripe link for the deposit
- DMs and emails to chase whichever half the client forgot
- A spreadsheet you update by hand to see who has actually paid
- IntakePay replaces all of it with one private link per client, and a page for your bio when you want one
How it works
Set up once: your business, your Stripe account, your plan. After that, each new client takes three steps.
Step 1: Create the client
Add their name and the deposit for the package. Your intake questions are copied onto their link.
Step 2: Send one link
Paste it into a text, an email or WhatsApp from your own phone. IntakePay never emails your client.
Step 3: They answer and pay
Your client fills in the intake and pays the deposit by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. The row flips from Pending to Paid and you get an email.
The Business & executive coaching template
An intake written for coaches, ready on day one
For leadership and executive engagements: role, goals, sponsor and cadence before the first session. Reword, reorder, add or remove any question before you send your first link.
- Short answerRequired
What’s your current role, and where do you work?
- ParagraphRequired
Six months from now, what would make this coaching a clear success?
- ParagraphRequired
What’s the biggest leadership challenge in front of you right now?
- Short answerOptional
Is anyone else involved in this engagement, such as a sponsor, manager or HR partner?
- DropdownRequired
How often would you like to meet?
- DateOptional
When would you like to start?
- DropdownOptional
Have you worked with a coach before?
- Short answerOptional
How did you hear about me?
The template as your client sees it. Northfield Leadership Co. is fictional.
Is it for you?
IntakePay is built around one way of working. If that isn’t yours, a simpler tool will serve you better.
Built for you if
- You sell coaching as packages or programs, such as a 12-week engagement or a 6-session block, not one session at a time.
- You take a deposit or an upfront payment before the first session.
- You want the intake answers in hand before you start, not halfway through session one.
- Your packages might be $750 or $5,000. The size doesn’t matter; the upfront deposit does.
- You work solo, and your current system is a form, a payment link and a spreadsheet.
Not for you if
- You bill per session and don’t take deposits. A plain payment link already does that job.
- You run a health, wellness, nutrition, fitness or therapy-adjacent practice. Those intakes carry health information that IntakePay isn’t built to hold.
- You need a contract builder or a calendar built in. Those are left out on purpose; the full list of what IntakePay won’t do says why.
- You coach as part of a team that needs shared accounts, seats or roles.
Try it before you sign up
Open the link a fictional coach would send. Fill it in on your phone and see what happens on your side when they pay. Nothing is charged.
How IntakePay works, start to finish
What many solo coaches do today
A discovery call goes well and the client says yes to your package. For many solo coaches, what follows is three separate tools. An intake form, often a Google Form or a Typeform, so you have their goals and background before the first session. A payment link for the deposit, sent in a different message. And a spreadsheet or a note where you keep track, by hand, of who has done which.
Each piece works on its own. The trouble is the gap between them. A client fills in the form and forgets the deposit, or pays and never gets round to the questions, and you write a polite follow-up asking for whichever half is missing. Until both arrive, you are holding a start date for someone who has not fully committed yet. None of it is hard, but it is admin that sits between a yes and the first session, and it repeats with every new client.
What you send, and what your client sees
Before the first link, you set up once, in three steps: your business name and an intake form, your Stripe account, and your plan, free until your first client pays you. Add your logo and colour in the first step, or later in Settings. The templates written for coaches are Business & executive coaching, Career coaching and Life coaching, and you can add, remove, reword or reorder any question. Each new client link copies the form as it stands when you create it, so a client never sees the questions change halfway through.
Then, for each new client, you create a client in IntakePay: their name, the package, such as a 12-week leadership program, and the deposit you agreed on the call. You get one link for that client, something like intakepay.com/c/q7m2xk4t. You send it yourself, by text, email or WhatsApp, so it arrives from you in a conversation they already trust. IntakePay never emails your client.
When they open it, the page is yours. It shows your business name and logo (or your initials, until you upload one), the package and the deposit due. Below that are your intake questions, from the template you chose and reworded however you like. For a leadership client that might be their role, what would make the coaching a clear success six months from now, the biggest challenge in front of them, and whether a sponsor or HR partner is involved. Their answers are saved in their browser as they type, so a client who is interrupted can come back to the same link and carry on.
There is no account to create, no password and no app to install. When they have answered, they sign your terms by typing their name (if you’ve written terms), and one button takes them to Stripe’s secure checkout to pay the deposit by card. Once it clears, they pick a time on your calendar (if you’ve added your booking link), right on the page when it’s Calendly. IntakePay’s name appears once, as a small line at the foot of the page.
Where the money goes
The deposit is not paid to IntakePay. Each deposit is charged directly on your own Stripe account: it shows in your Stripe Dashboard under Payments, pays out on your normal schedule, and any refund is issued there. IntakePay takes 0% of it. Stripe’s standard processing fees apply, the same as on any card payment you take, and the only thing IntakePay charges you is the subscription: $19 a month, starting the day your first client pays you.
That account is your own Stripe account, with its own full Stripe Dashboard, based in any of the 43 countries IntakePay works with, and you connect it during setup through Stripe’s own onboarding. Because the charge is made on your account, the money never passes through IntakePay, your client’s card statement shows your Stripe account’s statement descriptor rather than IntakePay, and nothing changes about how you handle payouts, refunds or your books. Stripe documents how direct charges work, if you want to check for yourself.
What happens on your side
In your dashboard, every client is one row: their name, the package, the deposit and a status. A new link is Pending. When the client pays, Stripe tells IntakePay, the row changes to Paid, and you get a short email. For a client called Sophia, it reads “Sophia paid the $1,500 deposit.” and links to the payment and the completed intake. The email never contains the answers themselves. They stay in your dashboard, next to the payment, and only you can see them, when you are signed in.
When they pick a time on your Calendly, the row shows it as booked, and any terms they signed are kept with the payment. From there you run the engagement the way you already do. If a client opens the link and does not pay straight away, the link keeps working, and following up is your call; IntakePay sends no reminders. If you refund a deposit in full from your Stripe Dashboard, the row changes to Refunded. Whenever you want everything in one file, you can export every client and every answer as a CSV.
IntakePay does one job: the step between a yes and the first session. It has no contract builder (your client signs your own terms by typing their name), no calendar of its own (your client books on yours), no client portal and no session notes. Those are decisions, not gaps, and the full list gives the reason for each.
Questions from coaches
Can I use this for life coaching?
Yes, if you sell programs with a deposit. The Life coaching template sticks to goals, values and transitions. Health and wellness coaching isn’t supported, because those intakes collect health information.
What if the client’s company is paying?
Send the link to the person who will answer the intake. Stripe Checkout accepts any major card, including a company card. If the sponsor needs a formal invoice or purchase order, send it from your own Stripe account or accounting tool.
Does every client pay the same deposit?
No. You set a default deposit, then choose the amount for each client when you create their link, so a 6-session block and a 6-month program can each have their own.
Can I collect the rest of the package fee through IntakePay?
IntakePay collects one deposit per client link, to hold the engagement. Collect the balance the way you do today, for example with a Stripe invoice from your own account.
Set it up before your next coaching package starts
Free until your first client pays you, then $19/month · card required