What you need from a client before the build starts
Most AI buildouts do not slip because the work is hard. They slip because nobody asked the client for an EIN in week one. Here are the six inputs a build needs, the two that sit behind review queues you do not control, and the intake email to send the day they sign.
Lumina9 min read
Six things. The client's exact legal business name and EIN, their real hours and service list with price bands, a calendar you can write into, a decision about the phone number, their logo and brand colors, and the name of the person who gets the leads. Collect those and the build runs on schedule. Miss any one of them and the build sits, usually for longer than anyone expects, because two of the six sit behind third-party review queues that nobody on your side controls.
That is the whole post. The rest is why each one matters and which to chase first.
Why intake is the part that actually decides your delivery date
A custom buildout is mostly assembly. The site, the chatbot, the follow-up sequences, the booking flow, that is all work with a known shape. What has no known shape is waiting on a client who has not sent their hours.
We covered the shape of the handoff in what happens after your client signs. This post is the layer under it. You order the build through the fulfillment platform and book a 30-minute pricing call, and nothing is charged until we start building. That call always lands on the same question, which is what you already have from the client. If the answer is "not much yet," the delivery plan comes out longer, for reasons that are not our queue.
Two items are the ones to worry about. The EIN and the calendar. The rest can be chased in an afternoon.
The EIN, and why you ask for it in the first email
If the build includes any texting, and most of them do because missed-call text-back is the feature owners react to hardest, then the business has to be registered for A2P 10DLC messaging. That registration is not a formality and it is not something willingness can speed up.
The Campaign Registry wants the exact legal business name as registered against the EIN. Twilio's own documentation is blunt about where that name comes from: use the name on the CP 575 EIN confirmation letter, and do not use the name on a W2 or W9, because those can differ. If the business lost the CP 575, they request a 147c letter from the IRS.
Two timing facts from that same page will save you a bad conversation. A newly issued EIN can take 30 to 90 days to propagate across the validation databases, so a business incorporated last month may fail registration for reasons nobody can fix. A failed identity check appealed with documentation usually takes 5 to 7 business days.
Then the campaign itself. Twilio currently warns that campaign reviews take 10 to 15 days because of submission volume. The registration also needs a written description of the campaign of at least 40 characters, a written explanation of how people consent to receive the messages, and between two and five real sample messages. The client's website has to be live, publicly reachable, and not parked or login-gated, and its privacy policy has to be publicly accessible, state that mobile numbers are not shared with third parties, disclose message frequency, and carry the line about message and data rates.
Notice what that means for a client whose website is a Facebook page. You are not blocked. You are building their site first, and the texting goes live after.
So: ask for the legal name and EIN in the first email after signature. Not the third.
The calendar, and the question people forget to ask
A voice agent that answers the phone and cannot write to a calendar is a voicemail box with better manners. The build needs write access to whatever calendar the team already lives in, plus the answers nobody volunteers:
Which calendar is the real one. Small offices often have a wall calendar that wins arguments and a Google Calendar that does not.
How long each appointment type takes, and whether there is buffer between them.
Who can be booked. One chair, three technicians, a rotating on-call.
What the agent should do when the calendar is full.
That last one is the question that separates a build that gets praised from one that gets a complaint in week two. If nobody decides, the default is to offer the next open slot, which for a busy HVAC company in August can be eleven days out, and the caller hangs up.
Decide the phone number before you promise a date
There are two shapes. The agent answers on a new number that calls get forwarded to, or it answers on the number printed on their vans. The second is what owners actually want, and it is the one with moving parts, because it touches a service the business already pays for.
You do not need this solved at intake. You need it decided at intake, because the answer changes the order of the build. Ask on the discovery call.
The five-minute items that still stop builds
Hours, services with price bands, brand assets, and lead routing are all quick, and they still hold up more builds than the EIN does, because everyone assumes someone else sent them.
Hours means real hours, including holiday cover and what happens at 11pm. Services means the actual list with a band attached to each, because a price band is what lets the agent answer a pricing question without discounting. This is the input that makes a vertical pack sound like their business rather than a template. Brand assets means a logo file that is not a screenshot of a logo, and the two or three colors. Lead routing means one name and one phone number for where a booked job goes, because "the team" is not a routing rule.
There is also the Google Business Profile, if the order includes local SEO. Google says verification reviews take up to 5 business days, postcard codes usually arrive within 14 days and expire after 30, and editing the business name, address or category while a postcard is in flight invalidates the code. Tell the client that last part before they tidy up their listing.
Healthcare clients need one more thing, and it is not optional
If the client is a dental practice, a med spa, a clinic, anything handling protected health information, the system has to be built for HIPAA and there has to be a signed business associate agreement. HHS is direct about the requirement: a covered entity may disclose PHI to a business associate only after obtaining satisfactory assurances, in the form of a contract or other written arrangement, that the information will be safeguarded.
On our side that is the HIPAA compliance add-on, which covers HIPAA-compliant hosting and configuration and a BAA signed with the client, priced on the same call as the rest of the order. What matters for intake is that you find out on the discovery call, not after the build is half assembled. Retrofitting compliance onto a finished system is a rebuild.
Where this goes wrong, and who should not order yet
Here is the honest part.
The biggest failure is not a missing logo. It is ordering a build for a client who has not actually decided. They signed because the demo was good and the monthly was fine, then intake asks them to name a price band for every service and they discover they have never written their prices down. That is not an intake problem. That is a business that was not ready, and you will spend three weeks being the person who keeps asking.
Second, a client who will not give calendar access. Sometimes that is an office manager protecting territory, sometimes a practice whose scheduling lives in software with no usable integration. Find out before you order, because the build you sold them is not the build they can have.
Third, and this one is on you. Two revision rounds come included on a website build, and more rounds cost money. Collect a vague brief, let the client redesign by reaction, and you burn both rounds and pay for the extras out of your margin.
Rush delivery exists, at 25 percent on top of setup, and it moves an order to the front of the queue. It does not move the A2P review queue or Google's. Nothing does. If a client needs texting live by a hard date three weeks out, say so on the pricing call so the plan is built around it rather than discovered by it.
The intake email you can paste
Send this within a day of signature, while momentum is still there:
Exact legal business name and EIN, as they appear on the IRS CP 575 letter.
Business address, website URL, and the name, title, email and mobile of whoever is authorized to sign.
Real operating hours, holiday closures, and what should happen after hours.
Full service list with a price or price band for each.
Calendar access, appointment durations, and who can be booked.
Logo file, brand colors, and two or three photographs.
One name and one number for where booked jobs and new leads go.
Whether they handle health information.
Eight lines. If it comes back complete, you have a clean build. If it comes back with three answers, you have learned something useful about the next ninety days with that client.
FAQ
Who collects all this, me or Lumina?
Onboarding assistance is included in the $49 monthly, and the intake path carries your branding, so the client sees your name on the form. We help get the right inputs collected and attached to the fulfillment job. The relationship stays yours.
Can the build start before intake is complete?
Parts of it, yes. Design and site structure can move while you are waiting on an EIN. Anything that depends on a missing input waits for that input, which is why the delivery plan is agreed on the pricing call rather than promised up front.
What if the client does not have an EIN?
A true sole proprietorship without one registers differently, and the rules are specific enough that they belong on the pricing call rather than in a blog post. Bring it up there. Do not guess and submit.
Does the client see any of this as coming from Lumina?
No. The intake form, the client portal, and the demo carry your logo, your colors, and your subdomain. The one thing always visible on a published demo is the sandbox disclosure, which states that the AI is a demo and that bookings in it are simulated.
How long does a build take once intake is in?
It depends on which services are in the order and what has to connect, and we confirm the plan on the pricing call. The part worth remembering is that intake usually sets the date, not build time.
Do this on your next close
Paste the eight-line list into your contract follow-up template so it goes out on its own. Then bring what comes back to the 30-minute pricing call when you order in Fulfillment, so the delivery plan sits on real inputs instead of optimism.
No workspace yet? It is $49 a month with the branded intake path, client portal, and onboarding help included. Start here. After launch, who maintains it is the next thing to settle.
