Quote form planner

What the planner does

It lists thirteen fields a contractor quote form might include, from the type of job to marketing consent, each with a suggested setting. You change the settings to suit your business, add any fields of your own, and fill in a few details for the privacy notice. The result is a plain specification: which fields are required, which are optional, the rules every field should follow and a short notice to place beside the submit button.

The default settings

The defaults make five fields required: type of job, description, suburb or town, rough timing and email address. Those are the minimum you need to send a useful first reply. Phone, preferred reply method, photos and budget start as optional. Full street address, how they heard about you, company name and marketing consent start as leave out.

These are a starting point. If you mainly do commercial work, company name may belong in. If you only reply by phone, make the phone number required and email optional.

The warnings

The planner warns you about a few choices:

• Full address required. You need it before a site visit, not before a first reply.
• Budget required. Some people will not know, and a forced figure tells you little.
• Photos required. Not everyone can take or upload one.
• Marketing consent required. Making newsletter consent a condition of a quote is poor practice; the spam law requires consent before sending commercial emails.
• No required contact field. Without one, you cannot reply.

The privacy notice

The Privacy Act's information principles expect a business to tell people, when collecting their information, what it is for, who will see it and how to ask for access or correction. The draft notice covers those points using what you enter: your business name, who reads enquiries, how long you keep enquiries that do not go ahead, any outside system involved and an email address for requests.

Read the draft carefully and change it to match what you actually do. If enquiries are copied into a job management system, name it. If you keep enquiries longer or shorter, change the period. The notice should also match your full privacy policy.

Rules for every field

The specification ends with rules that apply to every field, drawn from WCAG 2.2: a visible label, not placeholder text alone; required fields marked in words; error messages that name the field and explain the fix; and controls at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels. The quote form guide explains each rule in more detail.

Limits

The planner does not look at your current form or build a new one. It produces a written specification for you or your web developer to work from. The draft notice is a starting point, not legal advice.

Privacy

The planner runs in your browser. Nothing you choose or type is sent to us or stored after you leave.