Skip-trace intake essentials — what to capture before you start searching

Skip trace is one of the more common case types for a PI firm — collections agencies, attorneys, family-reunification clients, process servers, and an assortment of one-off individual cases. It's also one of the case types where the intake quality determines the engagement quality more than for any other case type. A skip trace with bad identifiers is hours of effort against the wrong databases. A skip trace with good identifiers is often a same-day result.

This post is about the intake fields that matter and the qualifying questions that prevent the firm from taking work it shouldn't.

The subject identifier hierarchy

For a skip trace, the intake should capture identifiers in roughly this hierarchy of usefulness:

1. Full legal name and all known aliases. Including maiden names, nicknames, and any prior names from marriage or legal name changes.
2. Approximate or known date of birth. A four-digit year is good; a month and year is better; a full DOB is best.
3. Last known address — full street address, city, state. Even an address that's years out of date is a starting point.
4. Last known employer. Often the most current-real-world data point the caller has, more recent than the residential address.
5. Known associates. Family members, ex-spouses, business partners — people who may still be findable and who may know the subject's current whereabouts.
6. Distinguishing characteristics. Profession, military service, criminal history, civic involvement — things that narrow searches across common names.
7. Last known phone numbers and email addresses. Useful for cross-reference but often outdated.
8. Vehicle information if known. Make, model, plate, state of registration.
9. Social media handles. Often the easiest validation of "this is the right person" once a candidate is identified.

The intake doesn't need every field. It needs as many as the caller can provide, captured accurately. A skip trace with five strong identifiers is much more efficient than one with name and DOB alone.

The purpose question

The intake should always capture the purpose of the skip trace. Common legitimate purposes:

• Collections. Locating a debtor for service of process or to collect on a judgment.
• Legal-support. Locating a witness, party, or person of interest in litigation.
• Family reunification. Locating a missing or estranged relative for the family's own purposes.
• Inheritance / estate. Locating an heir or beneficiary identified in an estate proceeding.
• Process service. Locating a defendant for service.

Common purposes that should warrant additional scrutiny:

• Personal grievance. "They owe me money but I don't have a judgment." The firm may still take the case, but the purpose changes the scoping.
• Reconnecting with someone who has cut contact. This is the category where stalking and protective-order violations sometimes hide. The intake should flag for the investigator to evaluate carefully.
• Vague or evasive purposes. "I just need to find them" without elaboration. Often a sign the caller doesn't want to articulate the purpose.

The intake assistant should never decline a case based on the purpose answer. It should capture the answer verbatim and flag it for investigator review.

Jurisdiction at intake

PI licensing is state-scoped. A skip trace where the subject is in a state the firm isn't licensed in may require referral to a partner firm in that state, depending on the nature of the work. The intake should capture the subject's last known state and the states they have ties to (employment, family, prior residence), so the investigator can make the licensing call before quoting a retainer.

For many skip traces — particularly database-driven ones rather than field-intensive ones — the licensing question is less acute because the work itself is records research that the investigator does from their licensed jurisdiction. For skip traces that turn into surveillance or in-person verification, the licensing question becomes central.

What the intake should not promise

Standard PI intake principles apply — even more so for skip trace:

• No promise that the subject will be located.
• No estimate of timeline.
• No quote of cost beyond the firm's standard retainer brackets, which the investigator handles, not the intake.
• No discussion of specific databases or techniques the investigator will use.
• No success-rate claims, ever.

The intake's job is to capture the information that lets the investigator scope the case competently. The scoping conversation happens on the callback.

The case file the intake produces

Indagor writes the skip-trace intake to Trackops as a structured casefile:

CASE TYPE: Skip trace
SUBJECT: [verbatim name + aliases]
SUBJECT DOB: [as captured]
SUBJECT LAST KNOWN: [address, city, state, year]
SUBJECT LAST EMPLOYER: [as captured]
PURPOSE: [verbatim]
CALLER PURPOSE FLAGS: [array, if any]
JURISDICTION OF INTEREST: [states the subject has ties to]
URGENCY: [verbatim — caller's own framing]
RETAINER AWARENESS: [yes / no / not sure]
FULL TRANSCRIPT

The investigator opens the casefile and has everything they need to triage. The conflict check has already run against the subject's identifiers. The scoping conversation can start on the callback rather than the intake-do-over conversation that bad intakes force.

What this changes for the firm

A firm with disciplined skip-trace intake spends less time gathering identifiers and more time finding people. The retainer-to-result time drops. The proportion of skip traces that come back inconclusive drops because the starting identifiers are better. The cases that should have been declined at the front door get declined at the front door, before any retainer changes hands.

Indagor captures the full skip-trace identifier set at intake and runs the conflict check against your prior cases. Start your agency at indagor.com.