Maintenance request form: what to include, a sample, and how to collect requests
Copy the 10 fields a maintenance request form needs, see a filled-in tenant sample, and learn to collect and triage every request in one list.
A maintenance request form asks what’s wrong, where it is, when it started, its category and how urgent it is. It also asks who’s reporting it and how to reach them. Tenant forms add permission to enter, the best times to come by and any pets. Send every request, including calls and texts, through that one form.
This guide is for property managers and facilities leads who get requests by text, phone call, email and the odd sticky note. It gives you a field list to copy, a filled-in sample, the extra questions for tenants, four ways to collect requests with their trade-offs, and a simple way to sort what comes in.
How we researched this: in October 2026 we checked every Google Forms, Buildium and AppFolio detail in this guide on their own help and product pages, linked where each appears.
What should a maintenance request form include?
Ask only what the person reporting the problem can answer. These ten fields cover almost every request:
- What’s wrong. One short line, like an email subject: “Kitchen sink leaking under the cabinet”.
- Property or building. A dropdown, if you look after more than one.
- Unit, room or area. “Unit 3C”, “second-floor restroom”, “loading dock”.
- Category. Plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling, appliance, building, safety or other. It tells you who to send.
- When it started. “This morning” tells a new leak apart from one that’s been dripping for a month.
- Details. What they’ve noticed, what they’ve tried, and anything the technician should know before coming.
- How urgent it is. Urgent or routine, with examples of each so people choose honestly. Put a phone number above it for emergencies, like the red line in the sample below.
- Photo (optional). A photo often shows the problem faster than a description. If your form tool makes everyone sign in once it has an upload question, as Google Forms does, leave the question out and ask for photos by text or email instead.
- Name. Who’s reporting it.
- Phone or email. How to reach them about this request.
Your team adds the rest when the request comes in: the priority you set, who it’s assigned to, a due date and a status. Leave those off the form. Do give every request a number and a date and time received, so the requester has something to quote when they call.
Facilities teams add two questions to staff requests: Equipment, its name or tag (“Walk-in cooler 2”), so the technician brings the right parts, and Is work stopped?, so a down machine or a closed restroom is seen first.
Keep the form short. Every extra question is one more reason for someone to text you instead.
What extra fields does a tenant maintenance request form need?
A tenant is asking you to come into their home, so a tenant maintenance request form needs a few answers a facilities request doesn’t:
- Permission to enter. “OK to come in if I’m not home” or “Only when I’m home”. A yes means the repair doesn’t wait for a time that suits everyone. Check what your lease and local rules say about notice before you rely on it.
- Best times to come by. “Weekdays after 4 pm” saves a round of phone tag.
- Pets. Whether there’s a pet inside and whether it needs shutting away, so nobody lets the cat out.
- How they’d like to hear back. Call, text or email. Some tenants answer a text long before they pick up a call.
Don’t ask for door codes, alarm codes or where a spare key is hidden. Answers get emailed around and saved in shared sheets, so keep those in your own records.
How should you collect maintenance requests?
Pick one way in and send everything through it. When a tenant calls or texts, whoever answers fills in the form for them, so every request ends up in the same list. Put the link in the move-in packet, on a sign in the lobby and in your voicemail greeting, and reply to texted requests with it.
These are the four common ways to collect maintenance requests, from simplest to most organized.
Paper forms
A stack of forms at the front desk or by the mailboxes. Paper costs nothing and works for tenants who aren’t online. But someone has to retype each one, and forms get lost between the office and the shop. Tenants can’t send one from their phone, and nobody sees a request’s status without walking over to the binder.
A shared email address
A maintenance email address that tenants and staff write to. Everyone knows how to send an email, and it works from any phone. But people write whatever they like, so you’re back to asking which unit and since when. Requests sit in one person’s inbox, replies scatter across threads, and nobody else can see where a request stands.
A Google Form and a Google Sheet
A free online form where every answer lands as a new record in a Google Sheet. The form asks the same questions every time and works in a phone’s browser, and the sheet gives your team one list. Under Responses you can choose a sheet as the destination (Google help). You can also turn on email notifications for new responses, and if you collect email addresses, Forms can send each person a copy of their answers, which works as a receipt (Google help).
To build it, add these questions in order:
| Question | Question type | Required |
|---|---|---|
| What’s wrong? | Short answer | Yes |
| Property or building | Dropdown | Yes |
| Unit, room or area | Short answer | Yes |
| Category | Dropdown | Yes |
| When did it start? | Short answer | No |
| Details | Paragraph | No |
| How urgent is it? | Multiple choice: urgent, routine | Yes |
| Your name | Short answer | Yes |
| Phone or email | Short answer | Yes |
| OK to come in if you’re not home? | Multiple choice | For tenants |
| Best times to come by | Short answer | No |
| Pets? | Short answer | No |
The catch is everything after the form. Status, priority and who’s assigned are columns your team adds and keeps up by hand, and requesters don’t hear back unless someone writes to them. Adding a file upload question makes everyone sign in to a Google Account before they can fill in the form, even if the question is optional, and the files go to the form owner’s Drive (Google help). Leave it out and ask for photos by text or email.
A request link from an app
Many work order apps and property management systems give requesters a page of their own. Tenants open it on their phone, the request goes straight into the list your team works from, and your team sees its status, so nothing gets retyped. Check how the tool counts people who only send requests: some include them free, others count them as users.
In the grid below, a half circle means partly: paper is one list only if every form goes in the same binder, email lands in one inbox rather than one list, and a sheet shows status only in columns your team keeps up by hand. Every option except paper needs the tenant online. For tenants who’d rather phone, log their calls on the form yourself.
Do you need property management work order software?
Not always. Whether you need a property management work order system depends on how many requests you get and what you already pay for:
- You already use property management software. Start with its resident portal. Buildium’s Resident Center lets residents submit requests with details or photos and shares the status as work orders are assigned (Buildium). AppFolio takes online requests through its resident portal and tracks them as work orders (AppFolio).
- You look after buildings, not leases. Facilities teams, and owners who handle their own repairs, usually want a work order app or a CMMS with a request page, a queue and a history for each piece of equipment. Our guide to free work order software compares MaintainX, Fiix, Coast and others, and walks through a free Google Forms and Sheets setup.
- You get a few requests a week. A Google Form and a sheet is enough. Move to an app when the sheet gets hard to keep up or to read on a phone.
How do you triage maintenance requests?
Triage means deciding, for each request, how soon it needs someone and who that is. Do it at set times, such as first thing in the morning and after lunch, so requests never sit for a day unread.
1. Pull out emergencies first
Some problems can’t wait for anyone to read a form: flooding, a gas smell, sparks or smoke, no heat in freezing weather, a door that won’t lock. Put your emergency phone number at the top of the form with these examples, so people call instead of typing. Scan new requests for emergencies anyway, since not everyone reads the top of a form. Emergencies skip the priority scale below: once you’ve dealt with one, log it as Urgent so it has a record like any other job.
2. Set the priority yourself
Treat the requester’s urgency as a hint. In the sample above, Maria marked her leak urgent, but a drip she can stop by not using the sink can wait until tomorrow, so it becomes High. For everything else, a short scale with a due date for each keeps everyone consistent:
| Priority | Due | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent | Same day | No hot water, the only toilet blocked, a fridge not cooling |
| High | Next day | A slow leak under a sink, one stove burner out |
| Normal | Within a week | A dripping tap, a running toilet, a sticking door |
| Low | Within two weeks | A loose cabinet handle, scuffed paint, a closet light out |
Work the list by priority, then by due date. These targets are a starting point: set your own to fit your buildings, and check what your leases and local rules say about repair times.
3. Tell the requester you’ve got it
Reply to every request the same day, even when the fix is next week: the request number, the priority and when someone will come by. A form that shows the number as soon as it’s sent, like the work order template below, covers the first part, so your reply only needs the when.
4. Turn it into a work order, or decline it
Accepting a request turns it into a work order: give it a person, a due date and a status, and track it to done. Our guide to what goes on a work order covers the rest. Decline what isn’t yours to fix, such as a tenant’s own appliance, and say why. If three tenants report the same hallway light, keep one work order and tell all three.
5. Close the loop
When the job is done, tell the requester and ask them to report it if it comes back. Once a month, look for the same unit, equipment or problem showing up again; an equipment maintenance log makes repeats easy to spot. Repeat requests are good candidates for a preventive maintenance checklist.
Take maintenance requests with GoodTaco’s work order template
GoodTaco’s work order template is a working app with a request page built in. Start from the template, publish the app, then share the request link. Anyone with the link can report a problem without signing in, and the request lands on your team’s board.
The request page asks what’s wrong, the building, the unit or room, and details, with a hint to say when it started, what they’ve tried and the best time to come by. Two checkboxes cover “It’s urgent” and “OK to come in if I’m not home”, and the last two questions are their name and phone or email. There’s no photo question, so when a photo would help, ask the tenant to text one. Add your emergency number and it shows at the top of the form, ready to tap and call. After sending, the requester sees a request number to mention if they call.
New requests wait on the board under “Requests to review”. Accept one to make it a work order: pick who’s assigned, the priority (Low, Normal, High or Urgent) and a due date, which the app fills in from the priority using the targets above. Or decline it. Only people signed in to your GoodTaco workspace can open the board and the work orders. Anyone else who has the link gets the request page and nothing more. Each building can have its own link. Turn it into a QR code for the lobby, and the form opens with that building already picked. One switch turns the form off.
The rest of the app comes with it: your sites, equipment and team. Each work order gets notes, labor hours and parts costs. “My work” shows one technician’s open jobs, most pressing first. Repeating jobs, such as a quarterly filter change, create their work order a set number of days before it’s due (7 unless you change it), the next time someone on your team who can edit opens the app. It starts with sample records from a small property maintenance team, which you clear when you’re ready.
You change the app by asking in plain words, such as “Add a question about pets” or “Add a category to the request form, with plumbing, electrical and heating”. Every version is saved, so you can roll back with one click, and the app works in any browser, including a phone’s. GoodTaco is free to start. Paid plans start at $9 a month, and Pro at $49 a month includes 10 users; bigger teams talk to us about Enterprise. If your requests already land in a Google Sheet, GoodTaco’s Google Sheets app builder can build the app on that sheet instead.
Give every request one way in, and your team one list to work from. Start free, no credit card needed.
Frequently asked questions
What should be included in a maintenance request form?
The requester's name and phone or email, the property and the unit or room, a one-line description of the problem, a category, when it started, details, and how urgent it is. A photo helps, but if your form tool makes everyone sign in to upload one, ask for photos by text or email instead. Tenant forms also ask for permission to enter, the best times to come by and any pets.
What is a maintenance request form?
It's the form tenants, staff or customers use to report something that needs fixing. It asks the same questions every time, so the maintenance team can judge how urgent each request is, decide who to send and turn it into a work order.
How do tenants submit maintenance requests?
Through the one channel you choose: a paper form, a shared email address, an online form such as a Google Form, or a request link from your property management software or a work order app. When a tenant calls or texts, whoever answers fills in the same form for them.
What counts as an emergency maintenance request?
Anything that puts people or the building at risk right now, such as flooding, a gas smell, sparks or smoke, no heat in freezing weather or a door that won't lock. List these on the form with a phone number to call instead of filling it in, then log each one as urgent.
How do I make a maintenance request form in Google Forms?
Create a form with the fields from this guide, then under Responses link it to a Google Sheet and turn on email notifications for new responses. Adding a file upload question makes everyone sign in to a Google Account before they can fill in the form, even if the question is optional, so leave it out and ask for photos by text or email.
How quickly should you respond to a maintenance request?
Reply the same day with the request number and when someone will come. Then work to a due date by priority: urgent the same day, high the next day, normal within a week, low within two weeks. Emergencies go by phone, right away. Check your leases and local rules for repair deadlines.
Is there a free maintenance request form template?
Yes. Copy the field list in this guide into a free Google Form, or start from GoodTaco's work order template, a working app with a request page anyone can use once you publish it.
Start from the work order template
Get your own copy of a working work order app with sample data, ready to make yours. Free to start.
Use the work order template, free