Describe who you are welcoming and what your team needs before day one or kickoff. Makeform turns that brief into an editable onboarding form with contact details, role or project context, document uploads, preferences, access requests, acknowledgments, and clear routing for the people responsible for the next step.
Route onboarding responses to email, Slack, Google Sheets, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a complete prompt, adapt it to your process, or send it to the Makeform builder. The question list previews a useful structure rather than a live generated result.
Prompt ready4 formats
Audience
Employees completing details before their first day
Format
Preboarding form with conditional access requests
Prompt size
506 chars
Brief qualitySends to builder
Example form structure
Preboarding form with conditional access requests
Prompt exampleEditable in builder
Preferred name and personal contact details
Short answerFirst ask
2
Role, department, manager, and start date
Short answer
3
Where will you work?
Multiple choice
4
Equipment, access, or accessibility needs
Checkboxes
5
Requested onboarding documents
File upload
Suggested routing tags
Suggested
New hires
New clients
Needs follow-up
Separate information you need to collect from tasks your internal team must complete. The form gathers reliable inputs; a checklist assigns the follow-up work.
Step 1
Collect
people, context, preferences, and files
Step 2
Route
HR, ops, IT, or account owner receives it
Step 3
Prepare
access, equipment, kickoff, and training
Step 4
Welcome
the first day or kickoff starts informed
Why one intake matters
Onboarding slows down when details arrive in fragments.
A name in email, a shipping address in chat, and project files in a meeting note force someone to reconstruct the same person or account. A structured onboarding form collects the inputs once and gives every owner a consistent starting record.
Ask the right branch
Use conditional questions so a remote hire sees shipping fields, an office hire sees building-access questions, and a client sees only the setup details relevant to the service selected.
Make missing details visible
Required fields for contacts, dates, owners, and dependencies prevent an onboarding handoff from reaching IT or the delivery team with its most basic decisions still blank.
Give each team a usable handoff
Send a complete submission to the inbox and connect it to the tools your team already monitors, rather than forwarding an unstructured thread and asking everyone to interpret it.
Two onboarding journeys
Use one builder for people joining your team or your customer roster.
New-hire and client onboarding share a practical pattern: identify the person, understand the context, collect what downstream owners require, and surface anything that could block a smooth start.
Employee preboarding
Gather preferred contact details, role information, work location, emergency contact, equipment needs, accessibility requests, and the records your HR process calls for before day one.
Client discovery
Capture goals, stakeholders, decision owners, scope context, timelines, brand assets, communication preferences, and unresolved questions before the kickoff meeting.
Access and implementation
Collect selected systems, permission levels, integration requirements, technical contacts, and dependencies in fields that an IT or implementation owner can review.
Working preferences
Ask about time zone, availability, communication channels, meeting cadence, training format, and support preferences so the welcome plan fits the person or account.
Onboarding workflow
Turn your intake requirements into a ready-to-share form.
Start with the real handoff your team performs today. Then generate, edit, test, and publish an onboarding form that collects enough detail for HR, operations, IT, or client delivery to act.
Tell Makeform whether the respondent is a hire, contractor, client, or customer, who receives the answers, and what must be ready by the first day, kickoff, or launch.
02
Edit fields and conditional paths
Replace generic questions with your departments, services, systems, work locations, and document requests. Hide irrelevant fields and require only answers someone genuinely needs.
03
Test each respondent journey
Preview the remote, office, employee, and client paths. Check instructions, upload requests, option labels, and the confirmation message with a colleague before sharing the link.
04
Publish and route the response
Share or embed the form, notify the coordinating owner, and send structured responses to the destination your team uses to prepare accounts, equipment, meetings, or training.
Form vs email vs checklist
Choose the right tool for each part of onboarding.
An onboarding form collects inputs from the person joining. A checklist assigns internal work. A welcome email explains what happens next. Strong onboarding uses each for its intended job instead of forcing one document to do all three.
Approach
What it handles well
Where it breaks down
ApproachEmail or chat thread
What it handles wellPersonal welcome, context, and quick clarification.
Where it breaks downAnswers arrive in different formats, attachments separate from context, and required details are easy to miss.
ApproachInternal onboarding checklist
What it handles wellTasks, owners, due dates, account setup, equipment preparation, and progress tracking.
Where it breaks downIt does not efficiently collect structured answers or files from the new hire or client.
Approach
Generated online onboarding form
What it handles wellConsistent contact details, preferences, conditional questions, requested uploads, and a complete submission.
Where it breaks downIt gathers the inputs; your team still needs owners and a process for acting on each response.
Field guide
What a useful onboarding form should include.
The best field list follows the decisions your team makes after submission. Collect enough context to prepare the next step, explain why sensitive or unusual details are requested, and remove questions that nobody owns.
Identity and contacts
Know the person and the people around them.
Begin with the name the respondent uses, reliable contact channels, and the relationship they are entering. For employees, that includes role, department, manager, and start date. For clients, it includes the organization, primary contact, project owner, billing contact when needed, and the person authorized to approve work.
Preferred name, email, phone, organization, and time zone.
Role, department, manager, account owner, or project sponsor.
Emergency contact for staff, or stakeholder and approver contacts for clients.
Role or engagement context
Collect the details that shape the welcome plan.
A start date alone does not tell an operations team what to prepare. Ask about work location, schedule, role, project scope, service selected, intended use case, target audience, or launch window. Structured choices help with routing, while a focused long-answer field preserves nuance that predefined options cannot capture.
Start, kickoff, delivery, or target launch dates.
Work location, service, project, use case, and expected outcomes.
Known constraints, dependencies, and the most important first milestone.
Access and equipment
Translate needs into specific setup requests.
Avoid a single field labeled access needed. List the actual systems, devices, software, workspaces, locations, or integrations that setup owners recognize. Follow a selected item with the details needed to provision it, such as permission level, account email, shipping address, data source, or technical owner.
Device, accessory, shipping, desk, or building-access needs.
Systems and permission levels, with an owner for approval.
Client integrations, data sources, technical contacts, and dependencies.
Preferences and support
Make the first interactions easier to plan.
Working preferences are useful when they change how someone schedules, teaches, communicates, or supports. Ask for time zone and availability before meeting preferences. Give clear options for communication channel, training format, or contact cadence, plus an open field for accessibility needs or other context the respondent wants the team to consider.
Availability, time zone, communication channel, and meeting cadence.
Training format, experience level, and topics requiring extra support.
Accessibility requests or practical accommodations relevant to onboarding.
Files and acknowledgments
Request each item with a reason and a destination.
Use separate upload fields for clearly named files rather than one unexplained attachment box. State which team reviews each item and provide an alternative contact for questions. When you include policies or process acknowledgments, show the relevant text or link beside the confirmation instead of assuming the respondent has seen another message.
Named upload fields for brand assets, background files, or requested records.
Plain instructions covering format, purpose, and who can answer questions.
Acknowledgments tied to the policy or process presented in the form.
Routing and follow-up
Design the submission for the next owner.
End by collecting blockers, unresolved questions, and the person responsible for approval. Use response choices that map to real destinations: HR for employment details, IT for systems, workplace operations for equipment, or an account owner for client scope. A useful confirmation message tells the respondent what happens next and where to ask for help.
A department, service, location, or request type that supports routing.
Open blockers, missing decisions, and the next internal owner.
A confirmation message with expected next step and contact channel.
Related tools
Build the forms around the onboarding handoff.
Use a focused intake for the respondent, a checklist for internal preparation, and dedicated forms for information, access, paperwork, or the eventual offboarding step.
Practical answers for HR, operations, and client-service teams replacing scattered intake messages.
What is an onboarding form?
An onboarding form is a structured intake completed by a new hire, contractor, client, or customer near the start of a working relationship. It gathers contact details, role or engagement context, preferences, requested files, access or setup needs, and open questions. The submitted record gives HR, operations, IT, or the account team the information needed to prepare the next step. It complements an internal checklist, which assigns the work that happens after those answers arrive.
What should I include in a new hire onboarding form?
Start with preferred name, personal contact details, start date, job title, department, manager, work location, schedule or time zone, and an emergency contact. Add equipment, software, building-access, training, accessibility, and communication-preference fields only when someone owns the follow-up. Request clearly named records through separate upload fields and explain their purpose. Keep tax, identity, or other sensitive workflows within the process and systems your organization has reviewed rather than collecting extra information by default.
What should I include in a client onboarding form?
Collect the organization and primary contacts, project or service selected, goals, success criteria, target audience, scope context, desired timeline, stakeholders, approver, communication preferences, and known dependencies. Add upload fields for brand assets, briefs, samples, or technical diagrams when the delivery team will use them. Ask who owns decisions and what must be resolved at kickoff. The goal is a useful discovery handoff, not a long questionnaire filled with questions the team could answer itself.
How is an onboarding form different from an onboarding checklist?
The form collects information from the person or organization being onboarded. The checklist coordinates work by the team doing the onboarding. For example, a hire selects a laptop and required systems in the form; the checklist then assigns purchasing, account provisioning, manager welcome, and orientation tasks. For a client, the form gathers goals, contacts, and assets; the checklist assigns discovery review, workspace setup, kickoff scheduling, and the first deliverable.
Can one onboarding form work for employees and clients?
Yes, when the opening question identifies the onboarding path and conditional logic shows a tailored set of fields. Shared questions can cover identity, contacts, time zone, communication preferences, files, and open questions. Employee branches can ask about role, manager, work location, equipment, and access. Client branches can ask about goals, stakeholders, scope, timelines, assets, and approvals. If the processes have different owners or very different instructions, separate forms may be easier to maintain.
How long should an onboarding form be?
Make it as short as the next decisions allow. Group questions into sections, show an estimated purpose through clear headings, and use conditional fields to remove irrelevant work. Required questions should support a real preparation task, routing rule, record, or decision. Move optional background questions later and explain unusual requests. Test the form as each audience: a remote hire, office hire, simple client, and technically complex client should not all face the same length.
Is this onboarding form generator free?
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and use your onboarding form without a response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge. You can revise questions as your process changes and create separate versions for hires, contractors, clients, or customers when that makes routing clearer.
What should happen after someone submits the onboarding form?
Send the response to a named coordinator and route specialized needs to their owners. HR can review role and contact details, IT can evaluate system requests, workplace operations can prepare equipment or access, and the account team can review client goals and files. Confirm receipt to the respondent, state the next step, and provide a contact for corrections. Use an internal checklist or project workflow to track work; the form submission is the input, not proof that every onboarding task is complete.
Start with one complete handoff.
Generate an onboarding form that gives every new relationship a clearer start.
Unlimited free forms and responsesFour editable onboarding promptsConditional employee and client paths