Hotel maintenance request form and log

Staff submit a maintenance request through a Google Form, each request becomes a row in a linked Google Sheet with a Status column, and the maintenance lead gets an email for every new request. About 20 minutes.

4 min read · Checked 24 October 2026

The five steps in 27 seconds

The steps from this guide, 27 seconds, no sound. The example maintenance request is an example.

Transcript of the video

0:00
MAINTENANCE
Every repair request, in one log
Google Forms and Sheets. Free. About 20 minutes.
0:02
1
A short form for the desk
forms.google.com > Blank form
QUESTIONS
Room or area / What's wrong / Urgency / Reported by
0:05
2
Every request lands in a Sheet
Responses > Link to Sheets
EXAMPLE
412 / AC not cooling / Urgent: guest affected now / Night desk
Each request is a new row.
0:09
3
Add a Status column
Insert > Dropdown
Open, In progress, Done.
0:11
4
Email the engineer every time
Responses > More
Get email notifications for new responses.
Each person turns it on in their own account.
0:15
5
Put the link at the desk
Published > Copy responder link
Bookmark it on the desk computer and phones.
0:18
What this does not do
It does not assign or chase jobs.
Only people who turn it on get the email.
No guest names. Room numbers are enough.
0:21
Every step, with the exact questions, is in the free guide.
vivifiedtech.com/guides
Link in the post.

Step 1: Build the form

Go to forms.google.com, click Blank form, and name it "Maintenance request".
Add four questions, and mark each one Required:
- Room or area, Short answer
- What's wrong, Paragraph
- Urgency, Multiple choice, with the options "Urgent: guest affected now", "Today", "When possible"
- Reported by, Short answer
Tell staff not to write guest names on the form. A room number is enough.
If the form sits on a shared front-desk computer, open Settings, then Presentation, and turn on Disable autosave for all respondents. Google suggests turning autosave off for forms used on shared devices or for repeated data entry.

Step 2: Link it to a Google Sheet

Open Responses, click Link to Sheets, and create a new spreadsheet. Name it "Maintenance log".
Every submitted request becomes a new row, with one column per question. Example row: 412 | AC not cooling | Urgent: guest affected now | Night desk.

Step 3: Add a Status column

In the response tab, click the first empty column to the right of the last question and type "Status".
Select that column's cells below the header, open Insert, then Dropdown, and add three items: Open, In progress, Done.
Google does not document adding your own columns next to a form's response columns. Send a test request and check that it lands in a new row, with Status left blank for you to fill in.
If you add a question to the form later, check where its new column appears before you trust Status again.
To see what is still open, click Data, then Create filter view, filter Status to Open, then click Save View.

Step 4: Email the maintenance lead for every request

Give the engineer or maintenance lead access to the form: click Share, enter their email, set their role to Editor, and click Send.
Each person who wants the email opens the form while signed in to their own account, then opens Responses, the three-dot More menu, and turns on Get email notifications for new responses.
Google's help page does not say who receives this email. Product Experts in the Google Docs Editors Community say each editor turns it on for themselves, and the email goes to the account that was signed in at the time.
Send a test request. Google does not document what the email contains, so do not assume it holds the answers. Open the Maintenance log to read the request and set its Status.

Step 5: Put the link at the desk

Click Publish in the top right, then Publish again. A form cannot take responses until it is published.
Click Published, then Copy responder link. Tick Shorten URL for a short link.
Bookmark the link on the front-desk computer and on staff phones.
Optional: in Chrome on a computer, open More, then Cast, save, and share, then Create QR code, then Download, and print it for the back office.
Share the link with staff only. Anyone who has it can submit a request.

Details and limits

Checked on 2026-10-24. Google changes menus, so re-check the linked pages.

What it does

A Google Form collects every maintenance request with the same four questions, every time. Each submission becomes a row in the Maintenance log, with a Status column you add yourself and update by hand. The maintenance lead gets an email for every new request, using Google Forms' built-in notifications, with no Apps Script and no add-on. Google Forms and Sheets need only a Google account, and nothing here needs a paid plan.

What it can't do

It does not assign the job to a person or chase a request left Open.
The email goes only to people who turned on notifications for themselves.
It does not filter what staff type. Leave guest names off the form; a room number is enough.

Limits

From September 2026, a form is limited to 1 GB of storage and 500,000 responses. A hotel maintenance log will not get near that.
Above 100,000 responses, Sheets sync may stop.
Editors can also edit the form itself, so give editor access only to people who need the email.
Permissions on the form and the linked Sheet do not sync after the Sheet is created. Change both if you add or remove someone.

When this stops being enough

When a job needs assigning to a named person, when a request left Open needs a reminder, or when you want a report of jobs by room over time, a form and a sheet cannot do that on their own.

Read how the no-build-fee model works.

Sources

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