The tenant maintenance request template that actually works

"The sink is broken."

That's a real maintenance request. Four words. Which sink? Broken how — leaking, clogged, no hot water, handle came off? Can I send someone in while you're at work? Is water actively going somewhere it shouldn't?

Every one of those questions is a text message you now have to send, wait on, and keep track of. Multiply by every request across every unit and you've built yourself a part-time job as a maintenance interviewer. The fix is boring and it works: a request form that asks the right questions once, up front, so the tenant answers them before you ever get pinged.

This post is the full breakdown — every field a good maintenance request form needs, why each one earns its place, a plain-text version you can copy today with zero software, and the three reply templates that close the loop on the other end.

The fields, and why each one earns its place

A form field is a tax on the tenant. Every field you add makes the form slightly more annoying to fill out, and an annoying form gets abandoned in favor of — you guessed it — texting you. So every field below has to justify itself. These six do. Almost nothing else does.

1. Unit and contact info

Name, unit number, phone, and email. Obvious, but two details matter.

First, ask for the phone number even if you already have it on file. Tenants change numbers and never tell you, and the number on the request is the number they'll actually answer when your plumber calls.

Second, if you can bake the unit into the form itself, do it. A shared "which unit are you in?" dropdown gets skipped or fat-fingered, and now you're guessing which 2B has the leak. This is why FixQueue generates a distinct QR code per unit — the request arrives already tagged with the address, no typing involved. On a Google Form, you can fake it by appending a unit parameter to the URL and sharing a different link per unit. Either way, the goal is the same: the unit should never depend on the tenant remembering to say it.

2. Category

A short dropdown: Plumbing / Electrical / Heating & cooling / Appliance / Doors, locks & windows / Pest / Other.

Keep it to about seven options. The category isn't for the tenant's benefit — it's for yours, ten seconds after the request lands. "Plumbing" tells you which contractor to text before you've read a single word of the description. It also makes your history searchable: when you're deciding whether to replace that water heater or patch it a fourth time, "show me every plumbing request for unit 4" is a real question you can answer.

Don't go deeper than one level. A tenant confronted with "Plumbing > Fixtures > Faucet > Compression valve" picks Other and moves on with their life.

3. Urgency — with definitions, not vibes

This is the field most forms get wrong. "How urgent is this? Low / Medium / High" is useless, because a tenant's ceiling and your ceiling are different ceilings. Everything feels High when it's your apartment.

The fix is to define the tiers on the form, in plain language:

• Emergency — call, don't submit. Fire, gas smell, flooding you can't stop, sparking outlets, no heat in freezing weather, break-in damage to doors or locks. Put your emergency number right here on the form. An emergency sitting in a queue is a lawsuit with a timestamp.
• Urgent — needs attention within 24–48 hours. No hot water, fridge dead, only toilet not working, AC out in a heat wave, leak that's contained but active.
• Routine — this week is fine. Dripping faucet, sticking door, torn screen, running toilet, burnt-out fixture you can't reach.

Notice what the definitions do: they let the tenant triage themselves, accurately, without a judgment call. When "no hot water" is printed next to Urgent, nobody has to decide whether they're being dramatic. And when a squeaky hinge comes in marked Urgent anyway — it happens — you have the printed definition to point to, politely.

This tiering is built into FixQueue's intake, so a no-heat request sorts to the top of your board and a squeaky door doesn't buzz your phone at midnight. But the tiers work on paper, too. The magic is the definitions, not the software.

4. Description — prompted, not open-ended

An empty text box gets you "the sink is broken." A prompted one gets you something you can act on. Instead of one big "describe the issue" field, ask three small questions:

• What's the problem? One or two sentences.
• Where exactly is it? Which room, which fixture, which side.
• When did it start, and is it constant or does it come and go?

That third question is quietly the most valuable one on the form. "Comes and goes" versus "constant" is often the difference between a $15 part and a real diagnosis, and it's exactly the thing a contractor asks first — so collect it before he's standing in the kitchen billing you by the hour.

5. Photos — required, not optional

If you take one thing from this post: make the photo mandatory.

An optional photo field gets used maybe a third of the time. A required one gets used every time, and it changes what a request is. A photo turns "there's a leak under the sink" into "the P-trap is dripping at the slip joint" — which means you can often diagnose the issue, buy the right part, and skip an entire look-see visit. You can forward the photo straight to your contractor with "can you fix this Thursday?" instead of paying for a diagnostic trip.

And photos are proof. Dated, attached to the request, they settle "that damage was already there" disputes at move-out and document that you responded to habitability issues promptly. We've written before about why photo-required intake beats text threads — it's the single highest-leverage setting on any form. FixQueue requires at least one photo by default for exactly this reason. If you're on a Google Form, mark the file-upload question required and never look back.

The one exception: things that don't photograph, like a smell or a noise. Add a line to the form — "if the issue is a sound or smell, photograph where it's coming from" — and you're covered.

6. Access permission

The last field, and the one that saves the most phone tag: "May we enter with our own key if you're not home?" Yes / No / Only at these times: ___

Without this, every routine repair becomes a scheduling negotiation. With it, half your requests can be handled while the tenant's at work, and the tenant told you that in writing — which matters, because entry disputes are the kind of thing that goes badly when it's your word against theirs. If they answer No, you know to schedule; if they give you a window, your contractor has one. Check your state's notice-of-entry rules regardless, but having standing written permission on the request itself makes everything downstream smoother.

The copy-paste template

No software required. Put this in a Google Form, a PDF, or literally a printed sheet in a kitchen drawer:

MAINTENANCE REQUEST — [Property name]

EMERGENCIES (fire, gas smell, flooding, sparking outlets,
no heat in freezing weather): CALL [emergency number].
Do not use this form.

Name:
Unit:
Phone:
Email:

Category (circle one):
Plumbing / Electrical / Heating & cooling / Appliance /
Doors, locks & windows / Pest / Other

How urgent?
[ ] Urgent — no hot water, dead fridge, only toilet down,
    active-but-contained leak. We'll respond within 24–48 hrs.
[ ] Routine — drips, squeaks, sticking doors. Handled this week.

What's the problem? (1–2 sentences)

Where exactly? (room / fixture / side)

When did it start? Constant, or comes and goes?

Photos: attach at least one. If it's a sound or smell,
photograph where it's coming from.

May we enter with our own key if you're not home?
[ ] Yes   [ ] No   [ ] Only at these times: ________

If you'd rather not build the form yourself, we made a free tenant maintenance form tool with these exact fields — use it as-is, no account needed.

The three replies that close the loop

The form gets requests in cleanly. These three messages — sent by text, since tenants read texts and ignore email — get them handled without the "did you get my message?" follow-ups. Copy, tweak, save as shortcuts on your phone.

1. Acknowledgment (send within a few hours, even if you can't act yet):

Got your request about the [issue] in [unit]. I'm on it — I'll follow up by [day] with a repair time. If anything changes or gets worse, reply here.

2. Scheduling:

[Contractor/I] can come fix the [issue] on [day] between [window]. You said entry with our key is [OK / not OK] — does that time work? Reply YES to confirm or send a better time.

3. Completion:

The [issue] in [unit] is fixed as of today. Take a look when you get home and reply here if anything's off — otherwise I'll mark it closed. Thanks for the photo, it helped us bring the right part.

That's the whole system: the acknowledgment kills anxiety, the scheduling message kills phone tag, and the completion message kills the "did you ever fix that?" text three weeks later — and creates a written record that you did.

Where the paper version runs out of road

The template above genuinely works. Here's where it starts costing you time as requests pile up: you're sending each of those three replies manually, tracking which requests got which reply, and re-typing scheduling messages into phone-tag threads.

That gap is the specific thing FixQueue exists to close. Each unit gets its own QR code pointing to a form with these exact fields, photos required. Requests land on a board sorted by urgency tier. Acknowledgments fire automatically by email and SMS, you propose appointment times inside the request instead of over text, and the tenant gets notified at every status change. It's $15/month, and it's the difference between owning a good template and having it run itself.

Start with the free version either way — grab the form tool, or copy the template straight out of this post. If you get to the point where you're sending the same three texts twelve times a month, the trial is here — 14 days, card required, no charge until day 15. The form is the fix; the software just stops you from being the one who operates it.