After a session you have ten minutes before the next client and a blank page. A template won’t write the note for you, but it settles in advance what goes where, so you stop rebuilding the structure every evening and your notes from March read like your notes from May.

This page has blank SOAP and DAP session notes, a 5P case formulation grid and a client intake form, plus one filled-in example. Each file comes as a PDF for printing and a DOCX for editing, and the links are at the end of the page.

What SOAP and DAP are for

SOAP splits a note into four parts. Subjective is what the client told you in their own words. Objective is what you observed: affect, pace of speech, how they engaged. Assessment is your interpretation, and Plan covers what you agreed on and where the next session goes. The format comes from medical records (Lawrence Weed described it in 1968), and it helps when you want to keep the client’s account apart from your own observations.

DAP folds the first two parts into one. Data holds both the client’s words and what you noticed, followed by Assessment and Plan. It’s shorter, and it fits talk-based sessions where what was said and what was seen are hard to pull apart.

Neither format is more correct than the other. Pick the one you’ll still fill in after a long day and keep using it, because a consistent structure lets you compare sessions months apart.

How the 5P grid differs from a session note

A session note describes one meeting. The 5P grid describes the case: the presenting problem, what precipitated it, what predisposed the client to it, what keeps it going and what protects them. You don’t fill it in after every session. You start it after the first few meetings and come back to it when something changes the picture.

For planning, the perpetuating factors usually matter most, because that’s where the work can change something. That’s why the grid has a treatment plan section under the table: the goals you agreed on and which perpetuating factors you take on first.

The intake form and what it leaves out

The client fills in the intake form before the first session: contact details, what brings them in their own words, previous help, whether they take prescribed medication, three safety questions, goals and a consent line.

It asks less than it could, on purpose. The medication question is yes or no, with no names or doses. There is no diagnosis field and no detailed trauma history, because a form is the wrong place for a client to write that down alone before you’ve met. The safety questions are there so that a “yes” is visible before the first meeting, not halfway through it. Decide before you send the form what you will do if someone answers “yes.” Adjust the wording to the confidentiality rules and professional standards where you practice.

An example, not a standard

The note below is for a fictional client, Anna Freud, after her fourth session with Carl Jung. It shows what a filled-in SOAP note can look like. It isn’t a clinical benchmark, and your notes can be shorter, longer or organized differently.

Subjective

Has been putting off a conversation with her manager about her workload for three weeks
“Every evening I replay that conversation and can’t fall asleep”
On weeknights falls asleep after 1 a.m., sleeps normally on weekends

Objective

Speaks fast when talking about work, slows down when describing her weekend
Changed the subject twice when her sister came up
Engaged, suggests options herself

Assessment

Avoiding the difficult conversation keeps the anxiety going and disrupts sleep
Possible link to family experience (sister), a hypothesis for now
Compared with the last session, names what she fears more easily

Plan

Until the next session, note the evenings she can’t fall asleep and what her thoughts were about
Next session: preparing for the conversation with her manager
Return to the topic of her sister if Anna is ready

What was added to the 5P formulation

Perpetuating factors: avoiding difficult conversations, evening rumination
Protective factors: reflectiveness, a stable job, willingness to try new things

If you would rather not fill these by hand

In CognitEase, after a session you chose to transcribe, a draft note is waiting in the format you picked: SOAP, DAP or your own set of up to six sections. You edit any item, remove what doesn’t belong and confirm. Confirmed notes build the client’s 5P case file, and a draft you haven’t confirmed doesn’t change it. If you turn on the intake form, the client is asked to fill it out before the first session, and you read a short summary of their answers. The session audio is deleted right after it’s turned into text.

The Smart dossier page covers notes, the case file and the intake form in more detail.

SOAP, DAP and 5P note templates for therapists