What should be in my client intake packet before the first paid coaching session?

The intake packet is the set of documents a client signs and returns before you take the first dollar. At minimum it contains an engagement agreement, a fee schedule with payment authorization, a written statement that you are not giving investment, tax or legal advice, a privacy notice, a data collection form with a document request list, a goals worksheet, and a policy sheet covering scheduling and communication. Seven pieces. Everything else is optional.

The order matters as much as the content. Agreement and disclaimer go out first, because they define what the client is buying and what they are not. The data forms go out second, because you do not want a stranger emailing you pay stubs before there is a signed privacy notice on file. Payment is authorized last, after signature, so nobody is charged for an engagement they have not agreed to.

What follows is the document by document build, written for a coach who is tightening a packet that already half exists rather than starting from nothing.

Engagement agreement: scope, term and termination

This is the spine. It names the parties, describes the service in operational terms, sets a term, and says how either side ends it.

Describe the service by deliverable and cadence, not by outcome. "Six monthly sessions of sixty minutes, a written spending plan updated after each session, and email support between sessions with a two business day response window" is a scope. "Financial peace of mind" is a marketing line and it is unenforceable in both directions.

The exclusions clause does the heavy lifting

List what the engagement does not include. Common exclusions in a coaching agreement: securities recommendations, tax return preparation or tax positions, legal advice or document drafting, insurance product recommendations, and acting as an agent on the client's accounts. Say plainly that you will not accept custody of client funds and will never ask for account login credentials.

For term and termination, give both sides a written notice period. Fourteen days is common for a monthly engagement. State what happens to prepaid but unused sessions when notice is given, because that is the clause you will actually have to point at someday.

Keep reading: What does it actually cost to run a solo financial coaching practice each year?

Fee schedule, refund terms and payment authorization

Put the price in a separate one page schedule that the agreement references. When you raise rates you replace one page instead of redlining a contract.

The schedule needs the fee amount, the billing frequency, the charge date, the payment method, what happens on a failed payment, and the refund policy. Be specific about the charge date. "Billed on the first business day of each month" prevents the argument that arrives when a card runs on a Saturday.

Payment authorization is its own signature. If you are storing a card on file with a processor, the client authorizes recurring charges of a stated amount on a stated schedule, and is told how to revoke that authorization. Do not keep card numbers in your own files or in an email thread. The processor holds the credential; you hold a token.

A refund policy that survives a dispute

Tie refunds to sessions delivered, not to satisfaction. A workable rule: unused sessions in a prepaid package are refundable at the package rate less sessions already held, which are billed at the single session rate. Show the arithmetic on the page. If a six session package is $1,500 and a single session is $325, a client who cancels after two sessions gets $1,500 minus $650, or $850. Those figures are illustrative, but the structure travels.

Disclaimer that you do not give investment, tax or legal advice

This belongs both inside the agreement and on its own signed page, because a standalone page is what you hand to anyone who later asks what the client understood.

The line to hold: coaching is education and behavior support around the client's own decisions. You can explain how a Roth conversion works mechanically. You cannot tell her to do one this year. You can explain what a deductible is and how an out of pocket maximum caps spending. You cannot tell her which plan to buy. You can walk her through what her CPA is asking for. You cannot take a tax position.

If you hold a credential, name it and name its scope. If you are also licensed or registered in another capacity, say clearly which hat this engagement uses and that the other services are separate, separately contracted and not part of this fee.

Privacy notice and how you store client documents

Midlife money work means you will see Social Security statements, tax returns, mortgage documents, divorce decrees and sometimes medical debt. That is sensitive enough to deserve a written handling policy even where no specific statute forces one on you.

The notice should answer five questions in plain sentences:

• What categories of information you collect, including documents she uploads
• Where it is stored, and that the storage is access controlled and encrypted
• Who else sees it, which for a solo practice is usually nobody, and if you use a contractor, that they are under a confidentiality agreement
• How long you keep it after the engagement ends
• How she can request a copy or ask for deletion, and how you verify the request came from her

Then follow it. Name one place documents live. Not email attachments, not a desktop folder, not a text thread. One place, with two factor authentication turned on.

Keep reading: What happens when a coaching client's debt turns out to need a bankruptcy attorney?

Data collection form and document request list

Split this in two. The form captures what only she can tell you. The request list names paper you need her to pull.

The form asks for household composition, employment and income sources, whether income is variable, current housing arrangement, known debts with balances and rates, retirement accounts by type and rough balance, and any expected change in the next twelve months: a move, a layoff, a parent needing care, a child finishing college.

The request list is short on purpose. Ask for the last two months of checking statements, the last two credit card statements for each active card, a recent pay stub or the last two months of deposits if self employed, the most recent mortgage or lease statement, the last retirement account statement, and the most recent tax return. Six items. A long list produces nothing; a short list produces most of it.

Tell her what happens if a document is missing. Usually the answer is that you start with estimates and correct them at the second session, which lowers the odds she postpones the whole engagement over one missing statement.

Goals and priorities worksheet

This is the one document she should complete alone, before you talk, and it is the one most coaches make too long.

Ask for three things she wants to be true in three years, each written as a sentence with a number and a date attached where possible. Then ask her to rank them. Then ask one uncomfortable question: which of these would you give up first if you could only fund two?

Include a short prompt about money history. Not a therapy exercise, just: what did you learn about money growing up, and what money decision are you still second guessing. For a client between thirty five and sixty, the answers are usually where the plan will meet resistance later.

See how MoneyMapCoach handles this for financial coaching

Scheduling, cancellation and communication policy

One page. Session length, how sessions are booked, the reschedule window, the no show rule, your response time for email, and the channels you do and do not use.

Be concrete about cancellation. "Reschedules with more than twenty four hours notice are free and unlimited. Inside twenty four hours, the session counts as delivered." Every coach who skips this ends up giving away several hours a month and resenting it.

State your channels. If you do not coach by text message, say so here rather than in a strained reply at nine on a Sunday night. Also state what an emergency is not: a market drop is not an emergency, and a client who is about to sign something today should be told to slow down rather than expect a same hour answer.

Signature order and record retention

Send the packet in two waves. Wave one is the agreement, fee schedule, disclaimer, privacy notice and policy sheet, all signed electronically. Wave two, released only after signature, is the data form, document request and goals worksheet.

The table below is the working sequence.

Step	Document	Signed	Timing
1	Engagement agreement	Yes	Within 48 hours of the discovery call
2	Fee schedule	Yes	Same envelope as agreement
3	Advice disclaimer	Yes	Same envelope as agreement
4	Privacy notice	Acknowledged	Same envelope as agreement
5	Policy sheet	Acknowledged	Same envelope as agreement
6	Payment authorization	Yes	After steps 1 to 5 return
7	Data form and document list	No	Released after payment authorization
8	Goals worksheet	No	Due 72 hours before session one

For retention, pick a period, write it down, and calendar the purge. Many solo practices keep signed agreements and session notes for seven years and delete client supplied source documents twelve months after the engagement closes. Whatever you choose, the packet has to say it and your actual folder has to match it.

Where the packet stops and the work starts

A good intake packet ends with a signed scope, a clean set of numbers and a ranked list of goals. What it does not do is keep any of that current. Three months in, the goals worksheet is stale, the debt balances have moved, and nobody can say from memory whether the plan you built in session one actually happened.

That is the handoff point. MoneyMapCoach takes the intake numbers and the goals ranking and turns them into a shared plan document the client can see, with milestones and monthly check ins that record what changed and what did not. The packet sets the terms. The plan is what you both look at every month after that.