# Intake forms

URL: /products/service/intake-forms · Id: `page:products/service/intake-forms`

> A Service's intake is the form a buyer fills before work starts: each field typed, measured and required, asked once, and checked against the brief.

Intake is what a buyer sends before work starts, declared once in the [Service](/business/nouns/service)'s `intake` key. The same fields become the order form in the [Portal](/business/nouns/portal), the inputs a buyer's agent sends over MCP, and the check [`Order.start`](/business/nouns/order/start) runs.

## The fields
| Field | Holds | Catalogmend's audit |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `name` | The field's name, in camelCase | `storeUrl`, `listings`, `styleGuide`, `sizeChart` |
| `type` | What the buyer sends | A URL, a count, a file |
| `measure` | How the Service sizes the job from it, in one sentence | "Listings in the catalog" |
| `required` | Whether work can start without it | `sizeChart` is required for apparel stores |

A field with a `measure` sizes the job, so it sets the price on a [Quote](/business/nouns/quote) and the ceiling of what the [Order](/business/nouns/order) buys.

## One form, three readers
The buyer sees a form in the Portal. A buyer's agent reads the same fields as the inputs of the order operation, with their types. The [Startup](/business/nouns/startup)'s agents read them as the brief on the Order.

Nothing is asked twice: a field the buyer answered on its Quote request carries onto the Order with the brief.

## Missing and beyond
A missing required field becomes one [Question](/business/nouns/question) to the buyer, and the Order stays in `intake` with the clock stopped. Work beyond the brief, such as 9,500 listings on a brief of 8,200, goes on a new Quote on the same [Deal](/business/nouns/deal). [Quotes and intake](/products/service/quotes-and-intake) has the whole flow.

## Testing the form
[Experiments](/business/nouns/experiment) may test intake questions: their wording, their order, what is asked up front. They never change what the contract promises for a given brief.