Stratus Online Forms: A Deeper Dive
It’s 9:40pm on a Tuesday night, and someone has just booked their first session with you. The confirmation page thanks them, and right underneath it asks a few questions: who’s coming, their ages, what they’re hoping for, and anything you should know ahead of time. They answer three of the questions, get pulled away by a kid who can’t sleep, and close the tab.
On Wednesday morning, they open your confirmation email and see a link to finish the form. They tap it, their three answers are still there, and they finish the rest over coffee. By the time you open Stratus, everything they told you is already on their client and session records. Nobody had to retype a thing.
That’s what Forms are for. When I introduced Stratus Online, I promised a closer look at each of the new tools. We’ve covered Bookings and Payments. This week it’s Forms.
Three Places a Form Can Go
Most businesses need information from clients at three different moments, so a form in Stratus Online can go in any of three places.
During the booking. Add a form as a page in any booking flow, and the answers are tied directly to that session. This is the place for anything you need before you can accept the booking.
Right after the booking. This one is new. A form can now appear on the confirmation page the moment someone finishes booking. It’s always optional in the moment. If they skip it, you can include a personal link in your confirmation email so they can finish later from any device. The link belongs to that one session, needs no password, and remembers where they left off. Once the form is submitted, it’s done.
On its own. Share a form as a link or embed it on your website. A lead inquiry form is the obvious example. Every submission lands in Stratus as a new record, ready for your follow-up. You can also set a form to open and close on specific dates, which works well for a promotion or an enrollment window.
Why “After the Booking” Matters
Here’s the tension every business runs into. You want to know a lot about a client before they walk in. But every question you add to a booking flow is one more reason for someone to stop before they finish. (If you’ve looked at your new booking dashboard, you’ve seen exactly which step that is).
Putting the intake form after the booking means you don’t have to choose. The booking stays short, and the questions come once the client has already committed and is still thinking about you. For anyone who skips it, the email link is there to catch them.
Building a Form
The form builder is drag and drop. Forms can have several pages, organized into sections, and you can preview exactly what your client will see as you go.
There are fifteen field types, including:
- Short and long text
- Dropdowns, checkboxes and yes/no questions
- Dates and times
- Email addresses and phone numbers, checked as they’re typed
- Numbers with a minimum and maximum
- File uploads
- Drawn signatures
- Headings and instructions to guide people through
Conditional logic lets questions show or hide based on earlier answers. Ask whether this is their first visit, and only first-timers see the questions meant for them. Stratus checks those rules again when the form is submitted, so what you receive always matches what you asked for.
Or Let Asta Draft It
If you’d rather not start from a blank page, tell Asta what you need. For example: “a pre-appointment form that asks about allergies, the style they want, and has a signature for our cancellation policy.” Asta builds a draft in the form builder. You look it over, change whatever you like, and turn it on when you’re happy with it. Nothing goes live until you decide it’s ready.
Already have forms set up in the Stratus desktop app? You can import them instead of building them again.
Kind to Your Clients
A form is only useful if people finish it, so we paid attention to the small things.
- Save and resume. Life interrupts, and nobody loses their answers because of it.
- Returning clients aren’t asked twice. Anything Stratus already knows about them arrives filled in.
- Only the questions that apply. Conditional logic keeps every form as short as it can be for that person.
- Your brand, not ours. Every form carries your logo and colors.
- No spam. Standalone forms have built-in bot protection, so your inquiry list stays full of real people.
Straight Into Stratus
Just like Bookings, Forms writes to your live data. Answers go directly onto the client, session, or invoice record they belong to. A copy of the completed form, signature and all, is attached to the record, so you can always see exactly what was submitted.
There’s nothing to import, export, or sync.
Safe to Change
Forms change. You add a question, reword a policy, or drop a field nobody fills in. When you edit a form, anyone who is partway through it keeps the version they started on, so you never break a form for someone mid-answer. Version history keeps track of every change, and more than one person on your team can work on forms at the same time without overwriting each other.
Join the Preview
Forms is available now in the Stratus Online preview, alongside Bookings, Payments and Asta. Click below to book a one-on-one meeting with a Stratus Coach, and we’ll help you get your first form running.