How to create a maintenance request form on your website

Whether your community consists of single-family homes, condominiums, or vacant lots, every association requires some upkeep. Determining how best to collect maintenance requests and act on them is important both for property values and resident satisfaction.

In this blog article, we’ll share how to use our “Custom Form” page type to create a maintenance request form that your members can use to submit work orders through your website.

Create the form

To create your form, add an unpublished “Custom form” page type to the page menu. Adding this page as unpublished will allow you to work out all of the details before making it available to your community.

Once you’ve added the page, create the fields that you’d like your members to fill out. Start by gathering general information from the member, like their name, address/unit, phone number, and email address.

Provide clarity about different types of maintenance issues your community will address by allowing members to select a specific area of concern. If you’d like your members to submit one maintenance request per issue, use the “Radio buttons” to create the list of options. For instance, you can use the radio buttons to provide your members the option to classify a maintenance request as either emergency, urgent, or routine. This will help your community determine the seriousness of the issue and prioritize accordingly.

You can also add a “Description” field where members can share details of the request, and a field for them to upload a photo of the described issue to help clarify the situation. Finally, if your community performs maintenance within your members’ properties, consider allowing the member to request a convenient date and time for the visit.

Below we’ve provided an example of what these form elements could look like:

Determine the recipient(s)

After you’ve saved the form elements, the next step is to select who will receive the form submissions. This could be an individual member or a custom group you’ve set up, such as the maintenance team.

Additionally, you can designate a specific email address as the recipient. Adding a community-branded email account, such as “maintenance@examplehoa.com,” as the recipient will route all the maintenance requests to one place, which is helpful for record-keeping.

Once the form has been submitted, the recipient(s) will receive a copy of the form via email, and a record of the submission will also be stored on the page!

Add descriptive page text

Finally, before publishing your page, we recommend including some page text to display above the form that explains its purpose.  

Consider sharing what your members can expect after they submit the form to your community. Providing details like how and when they’ll be contacted for scheduling and the general timeframe for project completion will help build trust in the system you’ve established.

Below, we’ve provided an example of what that text could look like:

Wrapping up

The “Custom Form” page type can be used in numerous ways to collect information from your members. Using this page type to create a simple maintenance request form members can access, fill out, and submit from your website will help decrease the time it takes to submit a request and take next steps.

For more ideas about ways to use the “Custom Form” please reach out to our customer success team here!