Customer Intake Form Template for Air-Con Cleaners

A customer intake form for an air-con cleaning business collects the details needed to quote, schedule and complete a job without a follow-up call: who the customer is, where the units are, what type they are, how access works and what the booking terms are. The template below is built for split-system, ducted and cassette cleaning in Australia, and it can be copied into a paper form, a spreadsheet or an online booking page.

Generic intake templates are written for consultants, agencies and clinics. They ask about project scope, budgets and deliverables. An air-con cleaner needs different answers: unit count, brand, ceiling height, parking and pets. The sections that follow cover each field and the reason it is there.

TL;DR

• An intake form for air-con cleaning needs four groups of fields: customer contact, property and access, unit details, and booking terms.
• Unit count, unit type and access conditions affect price and job length more than any other answers, so they belong on the form before a quote is given.
• Cancellation and deposit terms are most useful when the customer agrees to them at the point of booking, not afterwards.
• Personal information collected on the form triggers privacy obligations for many Australian businesses, including a collection notice.
• A form that lives on an online booking page removes retyping and missed calls, and a paper or spreadsheet version works as a starting point.

Table of Contents

• What an intake form does for an air-con cleaning business
• Customer intake form template: the four sections
• Ready-to-copy wording
• Cancellation and deposit terms on the form
• Privacy: what the form is allowed to collect
• Paper, spreadsheet or online form
• Perspective: what we see in intake forms
• Putting the form online with MyAirCare
• After the form is submitted
• Checklist before publishing the form
• FAQ
• Sources

What an intake form does for an air-con cleaning business

An intake form is a fixed set of questions asked of every new customer before work is scheduled. For a cleaning business it has three jobs.

1. Price accurately. A quote based on "a couple of splits" is a guess. A quote based on three wall-mounted units, one of them above a staircase, is a number.
2. Prepare the job. The cleaner arrives with the right ladder, drop sheets, equipment and time allowance.
3. Set expectations. Cancellation terms, payment timing and access requirements are agreed before the van leaves.

The top-ranking templates for this keyword focus on contact details, scope, timeline and budget. Those categories carry over, but the labels change. Scope becomes unit details, timeline becomes preferred date and time window, and budget is replaced by a quote or fixed service price.

Customer intake form template: the four sections

The template is grouped so it can be filled in within a few minutes. Fields marked required should block submission on an online form. Optional fields should stay optional.

Section 1: customer details

Date of birth, pronouns and emergency contacts appear on templates built for clinics and counselling practices. None of these is needed to clean an air conditioner, and collecting them adds privacy risk with no operational benefit.

Section 2: property and access

For rental properties, a short field for the property manager's name and contact is useful. Many cleaning jobs on rentals are booked by tenants but paid for by agents, and the invoice recipient needs to be known up front.

Section 3: unit details

This section carries the most weight in pricing. Where the form is online, each unit can be added as a repeating block so that a customer with four systems enters four sets of answers.

• Unit type: wall-mounted split, ducted, cassette, floor-standing, window or wall box, portable, or unsure.
• Number of units of each type.
• Brand and model, if known. A photo of the indoor unit's label can replace typing.
• Location of each indoor unit: bedroom, living room, office, and approximate height from the floor.
• Last cleaned: within 12 months, one to three years, more than three years, never, or unsure.
• Reported problems: odour, reduced airflow, water leaking, noise, visible mould, none.
• Photos: one of each indoor unit and, where relevant, the area around it.

The "reported problems" field helps separate a routine clean from a job that may need a technician. A cleaner who sees "water leaking" in advance can set the right expectation, which is that a clean may not fix a drainage or refrigerant fault.

Section 4: booking terms and consent

• Preferred date and a second-choice date.
• Preferred time window (morning, afternoon, first available).
• Service selected, with the price shown where it is a fixed price.
• Deposit or payment method, if one applies.
• A checkbox confirming the customer has read the cancellation and rescheduling terms.
• A checkbox confirming the customer accepts the privacy collection notice.
• Permission to send reminders by SMS and email.

The last item matters because marketing messages are regulated in Australia. The MyAirCare guide on SMS marketing laws for tradies sets out the steps involved. A transactional job reminder and a promotional message are different things, and the form should record consent for each separately.

Ready-to-copy wording

The following wording can be pasted into a form or a booking page. Business names and times should be replaced with the business's own details.

Opening line: "This form collects the details needed to quote and schedule an air conditioner clean. It takes about three minutes."

Access question: "Will someone be home at the booking time? If not, describe how the technician can reach each indoor unit."

Unit question: "How many indoor units need cleaning, and what type are they? Select all that apply."

Problem question: "Has the unit shown any of the following? Water leaking, bad smell, weak airflow, unusual noise, visible mould, none."

Terms checkbox: "I have read the cancellation terms. Changes made less than [number] hours before the booking may incur a fee."

Privacy checkbox: "I have read how my personal information will be collected, used and stored."

The cancellation notice period and fee are decisions for each business. They should be stated as exact numbers on the form, not left as "short notice".

Cancellation and deposit terms on the form

Missed appointments and last-minute cancellations are the most common cost of running a mobile service. Terms that appear only on an invoice are difficult to enforce, because the customer never agreed to them. Placing them on the intake form, with a required checkbox, creates a record of agreement.

Legal guidance for Australian cleaning companies lists the points that cancellation terms should cover. According to Sprintlaw's guide on refund and cancellation terms for Australian cleaning companies, these include how much notice a client must give to cancel or reschedule, whether deposits are refundable, partly refundable or credited to a later booking, and what happens if cleaners cannot access the premises at the agreed time. Each of those maps to one line on the form.

A workable set of terms covers:

1. The notice period for free rescheduling.
2. The fee, if any, for changes inside that period.
3. What happens if no one is present at the address.
4. Whether a deposit is credited to the clean, refunded or forfeited.

Customers also keep rights under Australian Consumer Law that a form cannot remove. The ACCC explains that consumers are entitled to a remedy when a service does not meet the consumer guarantees. Terms should therefore describe the business's policy without claiming to override those rights. A solicitor can review the final wording where there is any doubt.

For how to collect a deposit at the point of booking, the MyAirCare guide on taking deposits online covers the setup.

Privacy: what the form is allowed to collect

An intake form collects personal information, so privacy obligations apply to many businesses. Under the Australian Privacy Principles, an organisation that collects personal information must take reasonable steps to notify the person of certain matters. The OAIC's guidance on APP 5 lists these as including the organisation's identity and contact details, and the fact and circumstances of the collection. Whether a particular small business is covered by the Privacy Act depends on its turnover and activities, so a sole trader should check the position on the OAIC website or with a lawyer.

Two practical rules reduce risk whatever the answer.

• Ask only what the job needs. Each field should connect to quoting, scheduling, access or invoicing. A field with no use is a liability.
• Avoid sensitive details in free text. Enquiry forms that invite health or incident details create exposure when the business has no use for them, a pattern described in Sprintlaw's note on privacy risks when collecting customer information. An air-con cleaner has no reason to ask about a customer's health. If a customer mentions a respiratory condition, that is a reason to record a note, not to add a field.

The form should also say where the data is stored and who can see it. A shared spreadsheet that every staff member can open is a different risk from a booking system with user permissions.

Paper, spreadsheet or online form

Generic form builders suit consultants and agencies, and they can collect the fields above. The gap appears after submission. Someone still has to copy the answers into a calendar, send a confirmation, chase a deposit and schedule a reminder. Double bookings and missed calls usually occur in that gap.

The MyAirCare article on booking form fields for service businesses argues for four essential fields and three extras, which suits customers who abandon long forms. The template in this article is the fuller version, and it can be trimmed. A reasonable rule is to ask for the essentials at booking and collect the rest, such as photos and access notes, in a follow-up message or on the confirmation page.

Perspective: what we see in intake forms

We built MyAirCare from first-hand experience of running air-con cleaning work, and the same pattern appears again and again. Forms fail in one of two ways. Some ask too little, and the cleaner arrives to find six units instead of two. Others ask too much, and the customer gives up and rings instead, which brings back the missed-call problem the form was meant to solve.

Our view is that the unit count, unit type and access answers should be mandatory, and nearly everything else should be optional. Terms should be short and specific. A cancellation line with a number of hours in it is read and remembered. A paragraph of legal text is ticked and ignored.

We also think the form should not be a separate document. Fields are more useful when they feed the calendar, the quote, the payment and the reminder, because the answer entered once then drives the whole job. Our broader guidance on booking page design for air-con cleaning businesses follows the same principle.

— Lewis

Putting the form online with MyAirCare

MyAirCare is booking and management software for Australian air-con cleaners. It provides branded booking pages, service-term customisation, online scheduling, quote and invoice generation, automated reminders and payments through Stripe, with a mobile app for job tracking and before-and-after documentation. A customer fills in the booking page, and the details land in the calendar without retyping.

The Free plan costs $0 per month and is supported by booking fees. MyAirCare Pro costs $199 per month. An AI phone agent add-on is also listed. Current details are on the MyAirCare pricing page. The online booking setup guide describes a 15 to 30 minute setup, and a sample booking page shows how a finished page looks to a customer.

After the form is submitted

The form is the first step in a short sequence.

1. Confirm. An email or SMS restates the date, time, address, service and terms. The guide to booking confirmation emails for air-con cleaners and the one on confirmation SMS for trade teams cover the wording.
2. Remind. A reminder before the visit reduces no-shows. The article on service reminder automation recommends starting with a single SMS.
3. Document. Before-and-after photos on the day settle disputes about what was done.
4. Follow up. A reminder to rebook, sent when the next clean is due, brings repeat work in the slow season.

Checklist before publishing the form

• Every field connects to quoting, scheduling, access or invoicing.
• Unit type, unit count and access questions are required.
• Cancellation notice period and fee are stated in numbers.
• A privacy collection notice is linked or shown.
• Consent for SMS reminders is separate from consent for marketing.
• The form works on a phone, because most customers complete it on one.
• The software chosen handles GST and stores data securely. The guide on GST and security checks for booking software sets out four checks.

FAQ

What is a customer intake form?

A customer intake form is a standard set of questions a business asks a new customer before starting work. In air-con cleaning it records contact details, address, unit types and counts, access conditions and agreed terms. The answers support quoting, scheduling and invoicing.

What is the difference between an intake form and an onboarding form?

The terms overlap, and many templates use them interchangeably. Intake usually refers to the first information gathered to scope a job, while onboarding refers to setup after the customer has agreed to proceed. For one-off or recurring cleans, a single form covering both is usually enough.

What questions should an air-con cleaning intake form include?

The essential questions are the customer's name, mobile and email, the service address, the number and type of units, who will be present, and acceptance of the cancellation terms. Photos, brand and model, and the date of the last clean are useful extras. Questions unrelated to the job, such as date of birth, can be left out.

Is an intake form a legal document?

An intake form is not a contract by default, but it can record the customer's agreement to terms if the customer ticks a clear acceptance box. Privacy rules may apply to the personal information it collects. A solicitor can confirm that the terms and notices suit a specific business.

Sources

• OAIC: APP 5 Notification of the collection of personal information
• ACCC: Repair, replace, refund, cancel
• Sprintlaw: Refund and Cancellation Terms for Australian Cleaning Companies
• Sprintlaw: Privacy Risks for Workplace Safety Consultancies

Recommended

• Aircon cleaning leads: a practical guide for operators
• Finding quality clients for your air-con cleaning business
• Booking confirmation email for air-con cleaners: templates & guide
• Booking page design for air-con cleaning businesses