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Consultant Client Intake Checklist

Five documents and three sheets, including the request list that separates what never arrived from what arrived and does not reach.

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Pack of 8 files: 5 documents, 3 spreadsheets

Consultant Client Intake Checklist

Reading a Data RoomDocument
Request DisciplineDocument
Intake SummaryDocument
Open Questions RegisterDocument
Assumption LogDocument
Document IndexSpreadsheet
Coverage MapSpreadsheet
Gap and Request ListSpreadsheet

Consultant Client Intake Checklist

Intake Summary

What the client sent, and what they did not

Client · Engagement · Intake period · Prepared by · Date

1. What we can answer today

One line per engagement question the material in hand can answer, with the documents that answer it. Nothing else in this section: no caveats, no preview of the findings.

2. What nothing in the folder answers

One line per question with no coverage, each carrying the named document, the period and the grain that would close it. Not more financial detail. A regional cost allocation for four quarters, as a workbook, one row per region per quarter. This is the section the sponsor reads.

3. What contradicts something else

The two documents, the figures that disagree, the person who can settle it, and what the disagreement blocks. No preference indicated.

4. What is out of date, and known to be

Documents whose own stated date falls outside the period, plus the ones the client has said are superseded by something not yet sent.

5. What cannot be placed in time at all

Files carrying no date of their own, and the questions they were going to support.

6. Requests outstanding

Open rows only, in the status vocabulary of the sheet, each with the date you committed to reviewing it by.

7. What the work now assumes

Every live assumption in one line, each traceable to the request that failed to close.

8. What we need agreed this week

Three items at most. Each one a decision or a document, with a named person and a date.

Search this and you get intake forms: forty questions the client answers about their goals, their stakeholders and their preferred meeting cadence. Useful, and it is not the week that costs you money. That week is the one spent reading the folder they handed over, and it looks like filing until you try to fill the two columns an index actually needs. A file carries up to five dates and one owner, and a shared drive is the worst possible witness to either.

The five dates are the one the document states about itself, the one in the filename, the file system modified time, the properties created date, and the upload date. Only the first says what period the content covers. A drive export rewrites the third on every file it touches, so a folder shares a date belonging to the export, and the fourth is inherited from whatever file was used as a template. The index carries the date next to where that date was found, and leaves both cells empty when the document says nothing.

Then the requests, written the way an organisation writes them when it has to defend each one. The IRS procedures for requesting documents put one issue on each request and require the draft to be discussed before it goes out. They also make the requester commit, in writing on the request, to a date by which they will say whether what arrived was enough. Send River the folder in whatever state it reached you, or take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank.

The three registers, and why each one is keyed the way it is

The Document Index, the Coverage Map, and the Gap and Request List.

Consultant Client Intake Checklist

Document IndexCoverage MapGap and Request List

Document Index

Illustrative rows for a fictional freight business, Halyard.

Ref	File as received	Date on document	Date source	Apparent owner	Owner source
D-001	Halyard_Board_Pack_Q2.pdf	2026-07-18	Cover page	Group Finance Director	Named on cover
D-002	Ops KPI Dashboard FINAL.xlsx	empty	none found	empty	not stated
D-003	Ops KPI Dashboard FINAL v2 (Priya's copy).xlsx	empty	none found	Priya Raman	filename only
D-004	depot-throughput-2025.pdf	2026-01-09	Footer	Operations Analyst	Named in footer
D-005	Scan_20260803_0001.pdf	empty	none found	empty	not stated
D-008	headcount_extract.csv	2026-06-30	as_of_date column	HR Systems Lead	Header row

Ref

File as received

Date on document

Date source

Apparent owner

Owner source

D-001

Halyard_Board_Pack_Q2.pdf

2026-07-18

Cover page

Group Finance Director

Named on cover

D-002

Ops KPI Dashboard FINAL.xlsx

empty

none found

empty

not stated

D-003

Ops KPI Dashboard FINAL v2 (Priya's copy).xlsx

empty

none found

Priya Raman

filename only

D-004

depot-throughput-2025.pdf

2026-01-09

Footer

Operations Analyst

Named in footer

D-005

Scan_20260803_0001.pdf

empty

none found

empty

not stated

D-008

headcount_extract.csv

2026-06-30

as_of_date column

HR Systems Lead

Header row

Two columns, not one. A cell holding a date is worth nothing unless the next cell says where the date came from, because the four wrong answers are all easier to reach than the right one.

Empty is a finding. Three of these six files say nothing about their own date, so nothing in them can be placed in time. That matters before somebody builds a trend from D-002.

D-003 has an owner and a filename for a source. Priya's name is in the filename and nowhere in the file, so the row records both facts rather than promoting one.

D-002 and D-003 both claim to be final and disagree on two quarters of on time delivery.

Coverage Map

One row per engagement question, because the row that matters is the empty one.

Q	Engagement question	Held	Coverage	What would close it
Q1	Cost to serve per delivery by region	D-001, D-007	Partial	Regional cost allocation, four quarters, one row per region per quarter
Q2	Has on time delivery moved over eight quarters	D-002, D-003, D-004	Contested	The version whoever signs off the board figure will stand behind
Q3	Which roles own each depot handoff	D-008	Partial	Current depot org chart with reporting lines
Q6	What a depot shift costs to run	nothing	None	Shift rosters and payroll cost by depot, one representative month
Q7	Claims per thousand deliveries	nothing	None	Claims extract, one row per claim, with cause code and depot
Q8	Fleet replacement profile	nothing	Out of scope	Nothing. In the RFP, not in the signed scope

Engagement question

Held

Coverage

What would close it

Cost to serve per delivery by region

D-001, D-007

Partial

Regional cost allocation, four quarters, one row per region per quarter

Has on time delivery moved over eight quarters

D-002, D-003, D-004

Contested

The version whoever signs off the board figure will stand behind

Which roles own each depot handoff

D-008

Partial

Current depot org chart with reporting lines

What a depot shift costs to run

nothing

None

Shift rosters and payroll cost by depot, one representative month

Claims per thousand deliveries

nothing

None

Claims extract, one row per claim, with cause code and depot

Fleet replacement profile

nothing

Out of scope

Nothing. In the RFP, not in the signed scope

Keyed on the question, not the document. Q6 and Q7 are the rows the engagement lives or dies on, and a sheet keyed on files cannot hold them because there are no files.

Out of scope is a status, not a deletion. Q8 was in the RFP and did not survive into the signed scope. Recording it is what makes a later request for it recognisable as a change rather than as a favour.

Every closing condition names a document, a period and a grain. None of them says more detail.

Gap and Request List

Six statuses, because a request has more than two outcomes.

Ref	The one thing asked for	Agreed	Review by	Status	Why it does not close
R-001	Regional cost allocation, four quarters	08-20	08-22	Arrived incomplete	Two quarters arrived, so no year on year comparison
R-002	Which KPI workbook is authoritative	08-20	08-22	Arrived and contradicts	A third workbook, agreeing with neither of the first two
R-003	Depot org chart with reporting lines	08-20	08-22	Arrived complete	Closes. Q3 moves to covered
R-004	2026 tariff schedule and variation letters	08-21	08-25	Outstanding	Two working days past the agreed date
R-005	Unredacted 2024 predecessor review	08-22	08-26	Refused	Legitimate answer. Becomes an assumption
R-008	Definition of on time used in the workbook	08-22	08-26	Withdrawn	Folded into R-002 so one person is not asked twice

Ref

The one thing asked for

Agreed

Review by

Status

Why it does not close

R-001

Regional cost allocation, four quarters

08-20

08-22

Arrived incomplete

Two quarters arrived, so no year on year comparison

R-002

Which KPI workbook is authoritative

08-20

08-22

Arrived and contradicts

A third workbook, agreeing with neither of the first two

R-003

Depot org chart with reporting lines

08-20

08-22

Arrived complete

Closes. Q3 moves to covered

R-004

2026 tariff schedule and variation letters

08-21

08-25

Outstanding

Two working days past the agreed date

R-005

Unredacted 2024 predecessor review

08-22

08-26

Refused

Legitimate answer. Becomes an assumption

R-008

Definition of on time used in the workbook

08-22

08-26

Withdrawn

Folded into R-002 so one person is not asked twice

Arrived incomplete is the dangerous one. As far as the client is concerned R-001 is finished, and it stays finished in their mind until the review commitment date arrives and somebody tells them otherwise.

R-002 got worse by being asked. Requesting the correct version of a contested number reliably produces a third version. The next ask is who signs off the figure, which has an answer.

Refused is a status, not a failure. R-005 closes here and reopens in the assumption log, dated, with the sponsor told in writing. That is the difference between a variation conversation and an argument in month two.

Every row carries two dates: theirs, and the one you owe them.

Edit with AI

What's in the pack

Document Index

One row per file, with the date the document states about itself next to the part of the document that stated it, and a read priority that ranks the first pass before you turn the files into a sourced brief.

Coverage Map

Keyed on the engagement question rather than the document, so the question nothing answers is a row instead of an absence, and a question four disagreeing copies of the numbers answer differently routes to orientation in the client's financials.

Gap and Request List

Six statuses, one thing per row, a format specification per ask, and both dates: theirs to respond, yours to confirm it landed, or handed whole to a pack that names the export mode and the count upfront.

Reading a Data Room

The five dates, the four wrong owners, what a spreadsheet printed to PDF costs you, and how to read the executed agreement's own deadlines first.

Request Discipline

One issue per request and a three step escalation ladder, adapted from the published rules a tax examination follows.

Intake Summary

The two page document you send the sponsor in week one, in the section order that leads with the gaps rather than the inventory.

Open Questions Register

For questions no document will ever answer, so they go to a person instead: as quotes carrying their timecode, or into an interview programme with a target per question.

Assumption Log

Every lapsed request converted into a dated position the client has been told about, with the deliverable that moves if it is wrong.

How to use it

1
Open in River, or take it blank
Open the pack in River and hand it the folder, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and fill them in yourself.
2
Send the folder as it arrived
A drive export, a data room download, forty attachments from a kickoff thread, three versions of one board pack. Every file gets a row, including the ones nobody can read yet.
3
Name what the engagement has to answer
Three to eight questions from the signed scope. The map is keyed on those, so the empty rows appear the moment they exist and the reading order falls out of them.
4
Work the request list, not the inbox
One ask per row with a format and an owner, a chase ladder that fires only on rows genuinely past their date, and a lapsed request that becomes a written assumption instead of your problem.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes. The zip is Word documents and CSV sheets, and it needs no account and no card. Edit with AI is the optional half: the agent reads the folder you were handed, indexes it, and fills the registers. The other packs sit in the template library.

What format are the downloaded files?

Word (.docx) for the five documents, CSV (.csv) for the three sheets, zipped together. Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets open the registers off the download, and the documents open in Word or Pages. Nothing needs converting.

How is this different from a client intake form?

An intake form is the client answering questions about themselves. This is about the material they hand over, which arrives without an index and is where the first week actually goes. Use both: the form before kickoff, this from the day the folder lands.

Two spreadsheets disagree. Which one does it pick?

Neither, and that is deliberate. It records both figures, marks the question contested, and names who could settle it. Where you want the difference itself explained line by line, reconciling two exports that disagree is the run for that.

Can it date a document that has no date in it?

No, and it will not use the file system timestamp to fake one. A drive export overwrites that timestamp on every file it copies, so it records administration rather than content. The cell stays empty and the file appears in the summary section for material that cannot be placed in time.

What happens when the client just never sends something?

The ladder runs: a chase to the owner the working day after the agreed date, a sponsor copy three days later, then the row closes and becomes a dated entry in the Assumption Log with the sponsor told in writing. Open requests are your exposure; written assumptions are not.

What does 'Edit with AI' actually do?

It signs you up, installs this pack as a private workspace of your own, and puts the agent in front of an empty Document Index. Then you send the folder and tell it what the engagement has to answer, and the gap list comes back before the reading does.

Sources

IRS4.46.4 Executing the Examination (opens in a new tab)

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

LinkedIn GitHub X

Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

LinkedIn X

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Find out what the client did not send

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and hand it the folder you were given on Monday.

Edit with AI

Consultant Client Intake Checklist

What the client sent, and what they did not

1. What we can answer today

3. What contradicts something else

4. What is out of date, and known to be

5. What cannot be placed in time at all

6. Requests outstanding

7. What the work now assumes

8. What we need agreed this week

The three registers, and why each one is keyed the way it is

Document Index

Coverage Map

Gap and Request List

What's in the pack

Document Index

Coverage Map

Gap and Request List

Reading a Data Room

Request Discipline

Intake Summary

Open Questions Register

Assumption Log

How to use it

Open in River, or take it blank

Send the folder as it arrived

Name what the engagement has to answer

Work the request list, not the inbox

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

What format are the downloaded files?

How is this different from a client intake form?

Two spreadsheets disagree. Which one does it pick?

Can it date a document that has no date in it?

What happens when the client just never sends something?

What does 'Edit with AI' actually do?

Sources

Chandler Supple

More free templates

Find out what the client did not send