How to use the client onboarding form

Instead of typing a new client's details yourself, send them your onboarding link. They answer the questions in their own words, upload photos and videos, and a new client appears in your Clients list.

You have one onboarding link for your whole agency. Every business that fills it in becomes its own new client.

How to turn it on and share it

1. Go to Client Management → Client Onboarding. The page is called Client Onboarding Form.
2. Switch on Enable Onboarding Form.
3. Under Your Onboarding Link, click Copy and send the link to your client. Click Preview Form to see what they'll see.
4. Under the link you'll see "Link works until …", the date it stops working.

How to email the link (Send an onboarding invite)

You can email the link straight from the page instead of copying it.

1. On Client Onboarding, click Send an onboarding invite.
2. Type the client's Email address. First name and Business name are optional.
3. Check the Preview — it's the exact email they'll get, with your logo and colors.
4. Click Send. You'll see "Invite sent to …" and the invite shows under Recent invites with when it went out and who sent it.

The email comes from your agency's name, and when the client replies it goes to the contact email in your Profile. It has a white header with your logo (the one for light backgrounds). On the Starter plan the footer says "Powered by ContentForge"; on Growth and Agency it doesn't.

Changing the invite email

Your agency's owners and admins see Invite email on the same card and can change the subject and the text. Everyone else on your team can send invites but can't change the email.

Use these merge fields, and they're filled in for each client:

• {first_name}: the first name you typed. Left blank, it reads "there" ("Hi there,").
• {business_name}: the business name you typed. Left blank, it reads "your business".
• {agency_name}: your agency's name.
• {onboarding_link}: your onboarding link. On a line of its own it shows as a button. The email has to include it.

Click Save. Use the default puts back the original email.

What the client fills in

The form has 8 steps. The client can click any step at the top to jump to it.

1. Business Basics: Business Name (the only required answer), phone, email, website, domain, address, country, business days and hours.
2. Brand Identity: logo, brand colors, fonts, tagline, what sets them apart, business tone, What year was the business founded?, payment methods, business category, awards and licenses.
3. Your Story: What do you do?, What makes you different?, What are you dedicated to?, What do you stand against? and more.
4. About & Team: the owner's name and story, owner photo, About Us, team photos and business location photos.
5. Services: up to 20 services, each with a name, description, its own photo box and its own video box. The step starts with 3 empty services; Add Another Service adds one more, up to 20. Services left empty aren't saved.
6. Additional Info: service areas, other information, additional images and Other videos (videos that aren't about one service).
7. Online Presence: Google Maps, Google Business Page, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, YouTube and LinkedIn links.
8. Review & Submit.

Service photos and videos go straight into the right service folder, so a service's photos and videos sit together in the client's media. See How clients upload videos. The business logo they upload loses the empty space around it, the same as a logo you add yourself.

The owner photo, team photos, location photos and additional images show in Client → Media (under Owner Photo, Team Photos, Location Photos and Additional Images). Create with Zeus and the other Zeus builders count them as the client's photos. Owner and team photos only go in About sections. Deleting one in Media also removes it from the client's details.

The form shows your agency logo and brand colors from your Profile. When they finish, they see "Thank You!" and that your agency will be in touch.

After they submit

• A new client is created with everything they entered.
• On your dashboard, Needs your attention shows Onboarding form to review, and you get an Onboarding form notification in the bell. You also get an email at the contact email in your Profile.
• On the new client's Client → Details, a banner says "… filled in the onboarding form on …. Their answers are in the sections below." Check the answers, then click Mark reviewed. That clears the banner and the dashboard item.
• Zeus builds the client's brand voice in the background from their answers. This is free.
• The service names become tracked keywords.
• If you've set up webhooks, an onboarding-submitted event is sent with their answers.

Link expiry and regenerating

• A new or regenerated link works for 30 days.
• When it's past that date, the page says "This link has expired. Regenerate it to get a new link." and anyone opening the old link sees "Invalid or expired onboarding link".
• Click Regenerate Link and confirm "Are you sure you want to regenerate the link? The old link will stop working." The old link stops working straight away, even if it hadn't expired yet.

Examples

• A sales call that ends with "send me your details": copy the link into your follow-up email. By the time you're back at your desk, the client, their logo and their service photos are waiting.
• A landscaper with lots of job photos: they add up to 30 photos under "Lawn Care" and 30 under "Hardscaping". Each set lands in its own folder, ready for Zeus to use on the right page.
• Link shared by mistake in a public group: click Regenerate Link. The posted link stops working and you send the new one to your real clients.

Limits and what it can't do

• The questions can't be changed, added to or removed. Every agency gets the same form.

• There's no saving a draft. The client needs to finish in one go; if they close the page, their answers are lost.

• Business Name is the only required answer. A name that already exists as one of your clients is refused.

• The form makes a new client, so it counts toward your plan's client limit (Starter: 10; Growth and Agency: no limit). When you're at the limit the form shows the business "This form isn't taking new businesses right now. Please contact {your agency} directly." instead of the questions.

• Photos for each service: up to 30 (600 across 20 services), PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP, TIFF or HEIC, up to 10 MB each.

• Logo and owner photo: PNG, JPG, GIF or WebP, up to 5 MB. Team photos and location photos: 10 each. Additional images: 20.

• Videos: up to 52 on the form (2 per service and a dozen more), counting every service's box and Other videos together; up to 2 GB each.

• The FAQ, Business extras, Generation Directions and Content Plan aren't on the form. Fill those in yourself on the client's page.

• Your own agency fills in the same form from Getting Started → Tell us about your agency. It saves into My Agency (your own record) instead of making a new client, keeps your answers if you click Save and finish later, and builds your brand voice when you click Save. See Getting started.

• If you've set up a client domain on Growth or Agency, the link uses your own domain.

• Invites: up to 10 every 10 minutes and 50 a day per agency. Each invite goes to one address.

• An invite can't go to an address on your agency's do-not-email list in The Pantheon (someone who unsubscribed, bounced or marked your email as spam).

Who can use it

• Turning the form on, copying and regenerating the link, and sending invites need the Client Onboarding tool.
• Changing the invite email is for the agency's owners and admins.
• Reviewing the new client needs the Clients tool.
• The business filling it in doesn't need a login.
• You can also ask Zeus "what's my onboarding link?" in the chat.

Troubleshooting

• The client sees "Invalid or expired onboarding link": the link expired (30 days) or was regenerated. Copy the current link from Client Onboarding, or click Regenerate Link.
• The client sees "This onboarding form is not currently active": the form is switched off. Switch on Enable Onboarding Form. Your page also warns "The form is currently disabled."
• The client sees "This form isn't taking new businesses right now …": you're at your plan's client limit (Starter includes up to 10 clients). Upgrade to Growth or Agency from Billing & credits, or delete a client you no longer work with.
• "Business name is required": they need to fill in Business Name on the first step.
• "A client with this business name already exists": you already have a client with that name. Ask them to add their town ("Smith Plumbing Austin"), or delete the old test client.
• "Enter the year the business was founded as a 4-digit year, like 2009": they typed something like "09" or "2009ish". Ask for just the year.
• "Wait for the photos and videos to finish uploading": they clicked submit too soon. Wait until every upload is done.
• "Some files were skipped — use PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, TIFF or HEIC photos under 10MB.": some photos were the wrong type or too big.
• "Up to 30 photos for this service.": that service's box is full.
• Services have no video box, and Other videos says "Video uploads aren't set up yet": video uploads aren't set up for your account yet. Contact support. Photos still work.
• "Turn on the onboarding form first — the invite sends its link.": switch on Enable Onboarding Form, then send.
• "Your onboarding link has expired. Regenerate it, then send the invite.": click Regenerate Link, then send again.
• "That doesn't look like an email address." or "Enter a valid email address, like name@business.com.": check the address for typos.
• "Email sending isn't set up on this platform yet …": copy the link and send it yourself for now, and contact support.
• "… is on your do-not-email list …, so the invite wasn't sent.": that person unsubscribed from or bounced your emails. Reach them another way.
• "You're going too fast — try again in …": you've hit the invite limit. Wait the time shown.
• "Only your agency's owners and admins can change the invite email.": ask an owner or admin to change it. You can still send it.
• The client says the invite never arrived: ask them to check spam, and check the address under Recent invites.
• I didn't get an email: check the contact email in your Profile, and look at the bell and Needs your attention on the dashboard.